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Clyfford Still - From the Abstraction category:
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. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Activity category:
I am not an action painter. Each painting is an act. The result of action and the fulfilment of action... (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Colour category:
And as the blues or reds or blacks leap and quiver in their tenuous ambience or rise in austere thrusts to carry their power infinitely beyond the bounds of the limiting field, I move with them and find a resurrection from the moribund oppressions that held me only hours ago. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Contemporary Art category:
- b.1904 d.1980...
We are now committed to an unqualified art, not illustrating outworn myths or contemporary alibis. One must accept total responsibility for what he executes. And the measure of his greatness will be in the depth of his insight and his courage in realizing his own vision. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Cubism category:
I felt it necessary to evolve entirely new concepts (of form and space and paintings) and postulate them in an instrument that could continue to shake itself free from dialectical perversions. The dominant ones, cubism and expressionism, only reflected the attitudes of power or spiritual debasement of the individual. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Culture category:
Our age - it is of science - of mechanism - of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mammoth arrogance the compliment of graphic homage. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Finishing category:
No painting stops with itself, is complete of itself. It is a continuation of previous paintings and is renewed in successive ones... (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Fire category:
You can turn the lights out. The paintings will carry their own fire. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Freedom category:
I am not interested in illustrating my time. A man's 'time' limits him; it does not truly liberate him. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Influence category:
My work is not influenced by anybody. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Joy category:
A great free joy surges through me when I work... with tense slashes and a few thrusts the beautiful white fields receive their color and the work is finished in a few minutes. (Like Belmonte weaving the pattern of his being by twisting the powerful bulls around him, I seem to achieve a comparable ecstasy in bringing forth the flaming life through these large areas of canvas...) (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Life category:
How can we live and die and never know the difference? (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Limitations category:
To be stopped by a frame's edge is intolerable. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Painting category:
These are not paintings in the usual sense; they are life and death merging in fearful union. As for me, they kindle a fire; through them I breathe again, hold a golden cord, find my own revelation. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Purpose category:
I affirm my profound concern to achieve a purpose beyond vanity, ambition, or remembrance. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Simplicity category:
The best works are often those with the fewest and simplest elements... until you look at them a little more, and things start to happen. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Spectator category:
I want the spectator to be on his own before the paintings, and if he finds in them an imagery unkind or unpleasant or evil, let him look to the state of his own soul. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Symphony category:
I do not have a comic or tragic period in any real sense. I have always painted dark pictures, always some light pictures. I will probably go on doing so... Orchestral. My work in its entirety is like a symphony in which each painting has its part. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Taste category:
As for 'taste' as a criterion of painting, I find that it is most frequently applied to work that is essentially insensitive, brutal or vulgar beyond question. Could it now be a term with political undertones to seduce, or cover profounder motives of exploitation? I propose it be kept to the wine cellar. There it deceives no one but him who over-indulges. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Titles category:
As before, the pictures are to be without titles of any kind. I want no allusions to interfere with or assist the spectator. (Clyfford Still)
Clyfford Still - From the Vision category:
I hold it imperative to evolve an instrument of thought which will aid in cutting through all cultural opiates, past and present, so that a direct, immediate, and truly free vision can be achieved. (Clyfford Still)
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