The current exhibition, titled “Awful Bigness,” has a lot going for it, and it serves as a valid incentive to visit the museum, especially for folks who may not have been there for a while
Because of the limits imposed upon the Clyfford Still Museum by its charter — it can only show works by the late abstract expressionist painter, and there are only so many of those in existence — producing a new exhibition there can be like orchestrating a game of poker.Curators shuffle the deck, deal their hand, and hope to come up with a winner.
. Primarily because it is a lively and light-hearted show at an institution that has taken itself very seriously at times. But it is a solemn place by nature, and not even the cheery staff that welcomes people at the door can erase its innate weightiness, a personality heightened by the challenging work on its walls. Even advanced art scholars wrestle to understand Still’s jagged fields of color; the general public struggles mightily.
“Awful Bigness” feels luxurious in that way, thanks to the editing of curator Bailey Placzek, who collaborated with museum director Joyce Tsai. The pair know the work and they understand its power — a little bit of Clyfford Still goes a long way. What did he want us to see in the work “PH-897” — more than 13 feet tall — with a pool of orange down its center, surrounded on either side by vertical swaths of black, yellow, blue and red?The curators, in the exhibition text, posit this oversized gazing experience as natural for audiences in the Western part of the U.S. Citizens here are accustomed to looking at massive vistas, a fringe benefit of living in a place where the land rises and falls framing majestic views.
That might be frustrating for those who want to understand better the subject matter, to decipher Still’s codes of rough lines and blotchy pools of color, and to make these paintings look like … something. But it is simultaneously an invitation to relax and not try so hard and to appreciate the volumes of emotions that can come from big art.
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