Théodore Géricault’s 1819 scene of shipwrecked sailors, “The Raft of the Medusa,” isn’t really in the museum (It’s in the Louvre). The painting just appears on screen to be hanging next to Clyfford Still’s 1957 “PH-401” in Denver. (Provided by the Clyfford Still Museum)
The Clyfford Still Museum balances conflicting obligations as a rule, and it’s a tricky bit of museum- making.
On one side, it must work hard to enhance its namesake artist’s reputation and establish him, in the public eye, as the 20th century master that academics and critics know him to be. That means staging exciting exhibitions that draw people into its Denver galleries for repeated visits, so they get to know and understand the late, abstract expressionist painter’s unique and challenging way of seeing the world.
But that’s not so easy, even though the Still’s curators have had historic, world-class art objects to dangle as bait for repeat customers.
That’s because the museum’s other job is to respect the rules that the notoriously cranky artist left behind on how his work can be exhibited — rules that have been interpreted strictly into the institution’s charter. The stingiest of all Still’s demands: The museum may not hang works by any other painters on its walls.
So, how does a curator put Still in the context of other artists and movements when it can’t show the other artists’ work? Year after year? There’s always a threat that the Still Museum will get repetitive or fail at its primary mission or, worse of all, become boring.
But what if visitors could see the paintings of those other artists, even if they were not there? If the museum could somehow make the work of Still’s peers, his influencers and followers visible without actually bringing them into the museum?
Would that be breaking the rules, or would it be a clever solution around them?
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At the Clyfford Still Museum, visitors are handed smartphones which allow them to see paintings that are not physically present. The technology, augmented reality, helps viewers compare Still’s work with painters that influenced him. (Provided by the Clyfford Still Museum)
That question lingers over “Still & Art,” the current show at the museum, which uses augmented reality — the technology known popularly as AR — to virtually pair a dozen paintings by outside artists with Clyfford Still’s work. It’s also the thing that makes the exhibit intriguing, irresistible and of the moment. The museum worked directly with Google, the app developer GuidiGO, and augmented-reality pioneers RYOT to make the show happen.
As they enter “Still & Art,” visitors are handed a smartphone, specifically a large-screen Lenovo Phab 2 Pro. As they wander through the galleries, the device alerts them that there is an unseen painting hanging on the wall. Visitors point the phone at a marker and there it appears on-screen, right next to the Still painting it provides context for.
With this little bit of help, visitors can see Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 moonlit masterpiece “The Starry Night” right beside Still’s 1951 “PH-1071,” which uses similar blues, blacks and yellows and mirrors — in Still’s mysterious, abstract way — the jagged lines and craggy forms that van Gogh pioneered in his day.
(Just for clarity, Still did not name his paintings; they are catalogued with letters and numbers, mostly starting with “PH.”)
Or they can see an image of Théodore Géricault’s 1819 “The Raft of the Medusa,” that so-famous scene of shipwrecked sailors clinging to life on a makeshift raft, directly next to Still’s “PH-401,” a primarily red and black, 1957 abstraction that — while it doesn’t mimic the pure visuals of Géricault — reflects the earlier painting’s “imposing scale, awesomeness, and complex counter-point between breadth/minuteness and light/shadow,” as the exhibition’s wall text puts it.
In other words, Still’s work is full of the sort of drama, conflict, contrast and bigness that marked the Romantic era of painting that Géricault defined.
The exhibition moves forward by placing Still’s paintings among the work of his 20th century peers. The most startling comparisons come from the augmented juxtaposition of Still’s most popular work, “PH-247,” affectionately known as “Big Blue,” beside Barnett Newman’s “Cathedra.”
Both paintings are massive, horizontal fields of dark blue interrupted by thin vertical stripes. Newman’s work is much more geometric — his painting appears as a pure rectangle sliced in two by a crisp white line. Still’s is messier, less certain, and his blue field is interrupted by a turbulent black.
It’s hard to know what these abstractionists were actually depicting. A viewer gets the sense that Newman’s subject was the wide blue part and Still’s was the narrow black part; their perspectives are very different.
But the similarities in color, texture and emotion are potent, and the fact that both were created in 1951 indicates there was a lot of sharing of ideas back in the day. These geniuses influenced each other.
The exhibition ends by using augmented reality to reveal Still’s influence on those who followed. Phillip Taaffe’s 1988 monoprint collage “Quadro Vesuviano” bears a striking resemblance to Still’s 1954 oil “PH-161.” Both make their point in fiery reds and smokey blacks. Taaffe’s work appears to be an homage, and it borrows liberally.
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Source: The Know