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Letter 28:
Dear Clyfford Still |
Dear Clyfford Still, In 2001, I was at an opening at Anita Shapolsky's brownstone gallery uptown and the underknown abstract painter Sy Boardman, 1921 - 2005, then an 80 year old painter in her stable of artists, quietly told me that in the 1960s that all the New York painters felt that Pop would be over in two years. Sadly, forty years later, Pop's irony is still with us and visceral tough work is not respected as it was previously. Yet, I do incorporate both Pop material culture and tough abstraction in my diptychs. I believe irony can be relevant because too often the tough (as opposed to the commercial), is overshadowed. Mr. Still, what happened to our need to record our inner beliefs? And what happened to our desire to view these recordings, these interpretations? I, for one, crave them. Why do we accept popular sentiments rather than an intuitive assimilation of difficult issues into visual power objects, of socially concerned issues imbued in visual form and elements? Is the belief in form lost? The touch of illustration is not seen as secondary anymore. Why do most not integrate social content with serious form? But I mention the Anita Shapolsky gallery to you, Mr. Still, as Anita represents the Ernest Briggs estate-one of your students from your California days. Briggs is my favorite of Anita's stable of artists. I'm pleased to have exhibited my paintings with his work there. Alison Weld |
