Still Learning

When Clyfford Still was making art in the middle of the twentieth century, the United States was at the crossroads of social, cultural and political events. The style of painting Still developed became a key component of the multifariously defined genre, which historians coined as Abstract Expressionism. It was a movement that helped shape the outlook and progression of Western art and the broader cultural landscape.

While painterly styles under the umbrella of Abstract Expressionism clearly varied, the overarching zeitgeist among artists and critics was the importance of spontaneous, emotional, and individual expression. The act of painting itself was considered to be a form of liberation from the representational and formulaic guidelines within preceding artistic modes of modern art. Abstract Expressionism was also the first major art movement in the modern era that signified the United States’ role as an influential cultural force.

That prowess resulted in Abstract Expressionism’s embrace by the art scene establishment, as well as influential political forces. The former and latter both saw the movement as way to gain leverage against Soviet powers in the Cold War. Museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York did not want to risk clashing with the powerful government. They capitulated to the political agenda of fighting the Cold War, and were definitive in their efforts to showcase United States art and culture as being representative of the nation’s support of enlightened and liberated ideals. Connecting Abstract Expressionism with concepts of freedom and individuality was a potent tool used by taste and policy makers, to differentiate between a “free” society and one that was repressed.

On a formal level, Abstract Expressionism is the antithesis of the Soviet art form of social realism. Its diversity of style and focus on personal expression, implied that United States culture championed the freedom of its people; while the Soviet Union’s rigid and blatantly decipherable aesthetics signified their control over its populace.

It should be noted that many of the artists themselves often eschewed both the label of Abstract Expressionism, as well as blatant political usage of their work. Furthermore, several well-known artists tied to the genre supported socialist-inspired policies like the New Deal and other left-leaning social ideologies.

The use of Abstract Expressionism as a form of propaganda is hypocritical, because the era of the 1950s and 60s was rife with repression of human rights (i.e. segregation and gender bias) within the United States. Abstract Expressionism’s promotion by cultural influencers and policy makers was a well utilized ruse that swayed public opinion to consider the nation as the global beacon of freedom.

We face a similar cultural dilemma in the United States today, where museums are increasingly confronted by pressure from an authoritarian government to display works of art that align with their conservative and xenophobic outlook. But art also offers us a way to circumvent these roadblocks, by showing that a provincial and colonialist histories are largely indebted to Indigenous history. The Clyfford Still Museum is a good example of how an institution can incorporate a plurality of voices that acknowledge the complex relationship between colonial and Indigenous cultures.

The Clyfford Still Museum was founded after the death of its namesake. However, it upholds many of Still’s philosophies, including progressive art education. Art’s ability to facilitate cross-cultural understandings and connect with an intergenerational community is central to many of the museum’s exhibitions and programing. Examples include Clyfford Still, Art, and the Young Mind and the most recent exhibition, Tell Clyfford I Said ‘Hi’, both involving children as co-curators. The latter exhibition was organized in tandem with youth from the Colville Confederated Tribes Reservation.

In 1936 while Still was teaching art at Washington State College (now Washington State University), he and his colleague Worth Griffin traveled from Pullman, Washington, to the towns of Nespelem and Toppenish where they interacted with members of the Colville Confederated Tribes. The following year, Still and Griffin co-founded a summer art program to record the lives and landscapes of the Colville people and their reservation in Nespelem, Washington. While the colony sought to raise awareness of the Colville community’s traditions and their enduring impact on American culture at large, the colony was more of an educational experience for non-Native students.

Ninety years later, the Clyfford Still Museum has revisited Still’s connection to the Colville people and their land. Under the facilitation of curator Bailey Harberg Placzek, and Michael Holloman, who is a Colville tribal member and professor from Washington State University, the museum appointed 100 Indigenous student participants between the ages of three and fourteen to select works of art from the duration of the art colony, as well as work from Still oeuvre that they decided were related to tribal life. Some of the art colony portraits feature sitters related to the young student curators.

In addition to honoring their ancestors, the younger generation made important connections between some of Still’s signature Abstract Expressionist paintings and tribal motifs; and in doing so, have advanced both the scholarship of Still’s work and the overarching impact that Indigenous civilization had on the United States’ first major art movement. For example, students discovered that the abstracted fragmented shapes and the color palette in Still’s 1971 oil painting PH-796, reflect the patterns and hues of Pow Wow blankets they are familiar with.

Making connections between art and lived experiences is a natural consequence of art education. This organic response is typically supported by instructional art scaffolding in order to inspire students to build upon their observations using academic techniques like inferencing. By interpreting Still’s abstract paintings through the lens of a twenty first century youth and member of their tribal nation, the student curators became experts in Still’s work through distinct circumstances. That expertise, when shared in a museum setting via exhibitions, public programming and gallery talks, has a profound impact on a heterogeneous population. Accounts of how non-Native artists took inspiration from Native culture is plentiful in the academic canon of Western art history; but when Indigenous people present this lineage in their own terms, even the most trained and seasoned academics can still learn something entirely new.