Still Not Moody Enough

The Albright-Knox Gallery has suggestions for hands-on activities to help students identify with Clyfford Still, easily my favorite American painter.

Why don't you...

Make a diary without using words--use only colors and abstract shapes. Draw the way you feel today or something you did today. On the back of each drawing, write about what you were feeling or experiencing that day. Do the same thing for a whole week, or a whole month. Put the drawings together in a book.

Hang up the drawings from the above activity and have each student select one and write what it means to him or her or how it makes him or her feel. Come up with a system so that every picture is chosen by somebody. Compare what's written by the artist on the back to the viewer's interpretation. Do the two ever match? Which writing is "right"? (This is a question with no right answer, but students may discover some of the issues that artists face when confronting their critics.)

Clyfford Still often used dark colors in his work. Sometimes he used two, three, or more different looking blacks, or dark blues. Have the students collect markers, pencils, paints, and crayons--anything that can make a black or dark blue mark (even a charcoal briquet!). Then have them use a large sheet of paper and create an abstract drawing or painting like the one above, using only the colors they have collected. You could even try adding different substances to parts of the drawing after it is finished, such as Elmer's glue, to make some parts shinier than others. Talk about matte as opposed to shiny, opaque as opposed to transparent. Try to classify all the different blacks in the students' drawings using these terms. Finally, let students look at the works and describe how they make them feel.

It would be most satisfying to react as Still might have at the end of each activity. What's next: Yves Klein for fifth graders? Oh right, absolutely.