Mico Memories

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“My work reflects on the bonds that substantiate our humanity.” – Sculptor Mico Kaufman Sad but true, it has been a long time since I have been to a museum, a gallery or even traveled. The pandemic has changed much – I have even moved … Continue reading Mico Memories

LOVE in the USA

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Artist Robert Indiana (1928-2018)

We could all use a little extra LOVE this Fourth of July as the year 2020 has challenged us in many ways.

For the past few years, my family and I have taken road trips this week to discover new areas of this great country and learn more about our history and people in unfamiliar states. We have marked the 4th of July in different states each year. Last year, we stood as a family on a bridge in downtown Minneapolis watching an incredible fireworks display. This year we social distance.

Many of our road trips have involved much LOVE – of the real and Robert Indiana type. I love LOVE and try to make a point of seeing as many of Robert Indiana’s iconic works as I can in my travels. If artist Robert Indiana is an unfamiliar name, allow me to introduce him to you.

Robert Indiana is the quintessential American artist (1928-2018) who returned frequently to autobiographical motifs, symbols, and imagery. He built a body of work that reflected what it meant to be an American artist.

Robert Indiana was born Robert Clark in New Castle, Indiana, and was adopted as an infant by Earl Clark and Carmen Watters. Earl worked pumping gas at a filling station and Carmen worked as a waitress.

After serving for three years in the United States Army Air Forces, Indiana studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (1949–1953), the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (summer 1953) and Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art (1953–1954).[5] He returned to the United States in 1954 and settled in NYC.

While living in NYC on the Coenties Slip in the 1950s, a location that attracted artists Agnes Martin, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Ellsworth Kelly, Indiana discovered stencils once used to decorate ships. He adopted those stencils for his own practice, using them not only to make paintings but also to adorn remarkable totemic wooden sculptures that bear shapes, fields of color, and attachments such as wheels made of wood and steel. His artistic style is referred to as Pop Art – a label he shunned – he preferred sign painter.

Robert Indiana is most well known for his “LOVE” series – initially a print, created for the Museum of Modern Art’s Christmas card in 1965. This design was the basis for his 1970 Love sculpture and the widely distributed 1973 United States Postal Service “LOVE” stamp. It consists of the letters L and O over the letters V and E in bold Didone type; the O is slanted sideways so that its oblong negative space creates a line leading to the V. The red and green were meant to recall the sign of the Phillips 66 where his father was employed during the artist’s childhood when he was still known as Robert Clark. The blue represented the sky of his home state of Indiana.

Indiana failed to copyright his LOVE design, so opportunistic copycats began springing up left and right, churning out cheap aluminum paperweights and other baubles that would never earn their true designer a dime. Later, he struggled to gain a patent because trademark courts refused to grant a copyright for a single word. Further efforts did little to stop the flood of imitators. 

Mr. Indiana retreated to Vinalhaven, Maine, a remote island, in the late 1970s to escape the New York art scene where he remained reclusive until his death in 2018. 

The Star of Hope on Vinalhaven, Maine had been artist Robert Indiana’s home.

While LOVE will likely always remain the artist’s greatest contribution in the public imagination, his work beyond and apart from this memorable image places Indiana among the great American artists of the second half of the twentieth century. 

As we navigate this turbulent time in our history and look to create a brighter future for this country – let us look to LOVE. From the words of the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: 

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only LOVE can do that.” 

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is LOVE.”

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional LOVE will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

Go in LOVE ❤️

OTHER RESOURCES:

Interviews:

Where to find LOVE around the globe:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Love_sculptures

Discovering Clyfford Still

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“I never wanted color to be color. I never wanted texture to be texture, or images to become shapes. I wanted them all to fuse together into a living spirit.” – C.S.

While in Denver, Colorado last month, I took advantage of the couple of hours after the conference and my flight home to visit the Clyfford Still Museum.

I had ZERO knowledge of artist Clyfford Still before visiting the gorgeous museum that opened in 2011 to house 95% of Still’s creative output, and includes approximately 3,125 works created between 1920 and 1980. What drew me to the museum was the fact that he was an Abstract Expressionist (one of my fav periods of art) plus he seemed a bit quirky – always a win.

Still’s Background

“People should look at the work itself and determine its meaning to them. I prefer the innocent reaction of those who might think that they see cloud shapes in my paintings to what [a critic] says that he sees in them.” -C.S.

Clyfford Still was born on November 30, 1904, in Grandin, North Dakota. He attended Spokane University, Washington, in 1926 and from 1931 to 1933. After graduation, he taught at Washington State College, Pullman, until 1941. Still spent the summers of 1934 and 1935 at the Trask Foundation (now Yaddo), Saratoga Springs, New York. From 1941 to 1943, he worked in defense factories in California. In 1943, his first solo show took place at the San Francisco Museum of Art, and he met Mark Rothko in Berkeley. That same year, Still moved to Richmond, Virginia, where he taught at the Richmond Professional Institute.

When Still was in New York in 1945, Rothko introduced him to Peggy Guggenheim, who gave him a solo exhibition at her gallery-museum Art of This Century in early 1946. Later that year, the artist returned to San Francisco, where he taught for the next four years at the California School of Fine Arts. Solo exhibitions were held at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York (1947, 1950, 1951) and at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco (1947). In New York in 1948, Still worked with Rothko and others on developing the concept of the school that became known as Subjects of the Artist. He resettled in San Francisco for two years before returning again to New York. A Still retrospective took place at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, in 1959. In 1961, he settled on his farm near Westminster, Maryland.

In its January 15, 1951 issue, Life magazine published an article about them , along with a Nina Leen group portrait of fifteen of the protesters: Theodoros Stamos (1922-97), Jimmy Ernst (1920-84), Barnett Newman (1905-70), James C. Brooks (1906-92), Mark Rothko (1903-70); middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-92), William Baziotes (1912-63), Jackson Pollock (1912-56), Clyfford Still (1904-80), Robert Motherwell (1915-91), Bradley Walker Tomlin (1899-53); back row: Willem de Kooning (1904-97), Adolph Gottlieb (1903-74), Ad Reinhardt (1913-67), and Hedda Sterne (1910-2011). Leen’s photograph has come to be known as The Irascibles.

Why People Do Not Know about Him

In 1951, Clyfford Still ended his relationship with commercial galleries. From that time forward, only a select few of his works entered the art market. As a result, the Clyfford Still Museum houses 95 percent of Clyfford Still’s total output, making its collection the most intact body of work by any major artist from any century.

Clyfford Still Museum exterior, Denver, Colorado

My Visit to the Collection

“Color is an integral part of the conception. The works are conceived in color and do not exist amply without it.  Each picture takes on the color it demands.” -C.S.

The museum only had a few people milling around so I was able to enjoy my visit in relative solitude.

Most of Still’s later abstractions are enormous (many span over 10 feet) and create an altered environment for your experience. This later work was by in my opinion his strongest – Still departed from the figurative imagery of his early work.

This was my favorite Clyfford Still painting (I would share the title – but after Still stepped away from showing his work publicly – works were not named.)

I was told by museum staff that the collection changes quarterly. The have so many pieces to choose from! I look forward to following future exhibits online.

Other Museum Highlights

There was an incredible conservation and storage area that was public.

His Materials

“I want to be in total command of the colors, as in an orchestra.  They are voices.” -C.S.

I always love seeing the materials that artists use to create: their tools, how they organize their supplies – even how they store or label their pigments – I learn so much about their process & personality.

The CS Museum was a real treat in this area – take a look!

Check out this Museum if you are near Denver.

TIP: I was sent up to the galleries first – if I could redo, I would visit the brilliant interactive timeline on the first floor. The timeline layers: history, pop culture + Still’s bio in one easy to navigate interface. I loved it.

BONUS: The Clyfford Still Museum introduced me to these amazing women: Hedda Sterne and Betty Parsons. I love learning more about pioneering women in the arts (I feel a new MILES seminar coming on!)

Please comment/reach out if there are other lesser known “must see” art museums – as I travel for art.

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