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1957-J No. 1 (PH-142)

Like all of Clyfford Still’s paintings, 1957-J No. 1 (PH-142) lacks a name that might give any hint about the painting’s imagery or backstory other than the year it was painted. In this case, 1957. This nearly nine-and-a-half foot tall by over twelve-foot-wide canvas was painted in his signature abstract expressionist style: A beige canvas is filled with thickly-painted, jagged-edged blocks, stripes, and streaks in rusty brick red and black. The piece is accented with smaller areas of pure white and egg-yolk yellow. The painting resembles hand-torn paper collaged onto the canvas scrap by scrap, but there is none of the depth that layered paper would create. The colors shoot down the canvas, zig-zagging like lightning.

Four uneven, wide vertical stripes of brick red dominate the painting. The stripe on the left starts from the bottom, reaching three-quarters of the way up. To its right, the next one streams down from the top but stops short one-quarter of the way from the bottom. The other two span the full height of the canvas. The gestures that Still made in applying the red are apparent in the way the paint thicknesses vary. It piles up thicker at the edges of many small sweeping strokes that go every which way. These thicker parts are darker, and in the rare thin area, the canvas shows through just a little bit.

The next most prominent color is jet black applied in patches, and in strokes that serve as something like borders that separate the thick red stripes from the background beige. The black climbs, bends, and folds over itself. Sometimes black hugs red tightly. At other times, they appear like puzzle pieces that would fit perfectly if only they were pushed just a little bit closer. In eight spots where the winding black strokes curve around to meet each other, blotches of white appear inside like little islands and archipelagos punctuating the negative space. One island along the center of the canvas’s right edge is dark and copper-colored with no white. On the bottom left, one white island has a bright yellow stalagmite painted over the white that points up.

Before one can get too comfortable feeling like the zig-zags of color tell a full story, a few deviations must be noted. Floating in from near the upper left edge are three wispy, dark-gray cloud-like spots. And at the top edge, close to the left, a tiny stray yellow stalactite hangs down. Tracing straight down from that stalactite to the very bottom, the artist has signed the work in white paint, very small and quite casually, as only “Clyfford ‘57.”