3 April 1981

Charles Clough made this striking work, titled 3 April, on a modest-sized sheet using paint. It could easily be overlooked, but I would encourage you to spend some time with it. Clough came into his own as an artist in the 1970s, a period in which older ideas about what art should look like were falling apart. New York City was the place to be, yet it was also on the verge of bankruptcy. Institutions were not to be trusted. This helps to explain why Clough and his peers were drawn to what became known as ‘punk aesthetics’. It’s as if the artist is saying that he can do whatever he wants. He zooms in on sections of mass-produced imagery, cuts them out, and pastes them back together to disrupt their original meaning. If we want to understand this work, we need to consider the artist's unique process in relation to the society and art world from which it emerged. The work of art can be found in the scientific literature and many libraries.