The and the are teaming up for a pair of shows centered around the work of prominent abstract expressionist Mark Bradford.
But a month before that, Bradford will be feted by the side-by-side museums in Denver. He will curate a show of Clyfford Still paintings at the Still Museum while, at the same time, DAM will present “Shade: Clyfford Still / Mark Bradford,” an exhibition of Bradford’s recent works organized by the
The Denver events “will very much be part of the wave” expected to surround Bradford next year,” said Dean Sobel, who directs the Still museum.
Bradford has talked repeatedly of his admiration for the work of Still, who died in 1980, and there are similarities in their work, among them a tendency to paint on large canvases and to create multiple surface variations in two-dimensional work.
But they also share a fondness for using shades of black, which Still pioneered in an era of colorful, modern painting and which Bradford uses as a way of sparking a dialogue about race.
“Shade,” which continues in Buffalo through October, features six new paintings Bradford made directly in response to Clyfford Still’s work. In an adjacent room, the museum has placed 20 of Still’s paintings that Bradford himself culled from that museum’s collection of the artistap work.The Albright-Knox could not show the paintings in the same room because of restrictions on how Still’s works can be presented that the museum agreed to years ago when it accepted the objects into its holdings.
DAM, which owns no Stills, plans to mitigate that distance by borrowing two Still paintings from private collections and showing them in proximity to Bradford’s work.
“This will be the first time we’re able to have Clyfford Still and Mark Bradford canvases within a single view frame,” said Rebecca Hart, DAM’s curator of modern and contemporary art.
Ironically, restrictions on the Clyfford Still Museum’s own holdings prevent it from loaning any Still paintings to DAM right across the alley in the Golden Triangle neighborhood. The Still museum owns about 850 Still paintings.
But CSM will provide a depth of context for DAM’s event by exhibiting the works curated by Bradford,
The show is the third installment of CSM’s “Artist Select” series, which featured a show curated by Devo founder Mark Mothersbaugh in 2015 and continues with a show chosen by artist Julian Schnabel in January 2017.
Bradford’s picks will cover several decades of Still’s career, although, not surprsingly, the color black will be prominent.
“They’re both artists who want to make art that has meaning, that isn’t just about art and has a larger statement to make,” Sobel said.
