1950-K-No. 1 1950

Clyfford Still made this oil on canvas painting in 1950-ish, and it hangs at SFMOMA. It's mostly off-white with a splatter of orange in the top left, a splatter of blue in the middle, and a tiny dot of yellow in between. I imagine him in his studio, wrestling with this huge canvas, unsure of where to begin. It feels sparse, like the last gestures after everything else has been scraped away. I wonder if the white is a ground, or if it’s a final layer, painted to silence the chaos beneath. That blue feels so decisive, doesn't it? Like a storm cloud, dense and compact, a real contrast to the etherial feel of the ground. And the orange mark? A memory, a flash of heat, a counterpoint to the cool blue. Still was part of that generation who were talking to each other through their canvases, from Pollock to Rothko. They each found their voice, trying to express something inexpressible. We might look at this canvas and think it's unfinished, but maybe Still is inviting us to complete it, to feel our way through it.