Shade: Clyfford Still/Mark Bradford

Contemporary works and abstract expressionist masterpieces converge in Shade, a collaborative presentation by the Denver Art Museum (DAM) and Clyfford Still Museum (CSM). In this two-venue exhibition, paintings by renowned contemporary American artist Mark Bradford—who will represent the United States at the 2017 Venice Biennale—will be on view at the DAM, while a presentation of Still’s work selected in collaboration with Bradford will be on view here at CSM.

In Shade, Bradford underscores the legacy of abstract expressionism and explores abstraction’s power to address social and political concerns. The exhibition examines both his and Still’s unique relationship to black in their paintings, whether it’s used to force viewers out of their comfort zones, evoke emotions, or confront conventional notions of race. As an African American painter, Bradford has long been fascinated by Still’s extensive use of black as a signature component of his work. Still made many statements about the color, referring to his canvases as “black suns” and “black monsters.” “Black,” Still proclaimed, “was never a color of death or terror for me. I think of it as warm—and generative. But color is what you choose to make it.” Such affirmative references to blackness were unparalleled in a 1950s America divided by the early rumblings of the Civil Rights movement and the 1955 murder of Emmett Till.

Bradford reads Still’s relationship with black as an open-ended invitation for dialogue. “For me as an artist, I am much more interested in questions than answers. Shade is simply putting questions into the public domain,” Bradford says. Bradford recently stated, “I think there are other ways of looking through abstraction. To use the whole social fabric of our society as a point of departure for abstraction reanimates it, dusts it off.”