|
”The
spiritual truth of the moving form is a
changing mass of light, reflection vibrating
color – and life. Now when a form is
moving – like a fish, for example – you
cannot give the vibration of light on that
form by adhering to a line to produce the
fish.”
-- Clivette
Painter and
vaudevillian Merton Clivette left a body of
work that has seen little daylight since the
1930’s. His stunning expressionist paintings
have been made available to the public
through the diligent efforts of Clivette’s
heirs and their restoration team.
Born in
Wisconsin in 1868, Clivette grew up in the
Wyoming Territory. He left home as a
teenager to work as an acrobat in a
traveling Wild West show which toured the
American Northwest. He honed his talents as
a master acrobat, juggler and
sleight-of-hand artist into a fine
Vaudeville routine. In the late 1880’s,
Clivette moved first to Seattle and then to
San Francisco, where he landed a job as a
quick-sketch artist for a San Francisco
newspaper, “The Call”. From 1891 to about
1900 he toured America with his Vaudeville
act on the famous Orpheum Circuit. Clivette
took his act to Europe and during these
trips, the visually astute Clivette absorbed
the great art of the European tradition.
Clivette returned from these travels a
world-wise artist and settled in New York
City to paint full time.
Clivette
chose to see past “high culture” to popular
realist subjects, which aligned him with
Ashcan School contemporaries like Robert
Henri and The Eight. Clivette’s connection
to Henri and other realists is through the
use of loose brushwork and traditional use
of light and dark contrasts. The “Vamp”
series depicts Show Biz women in tawdry
guise of Burlesque and is one of Clivette’s
signature themes. The technique and candor
or these canvases link Clivette to the
ashcan artists. The Vamp’s pallid skin,
crimson rouged cheeks, and black kohl
eyeliner are rendered in thick sumptuous
jabs of paint. In contrast to the taunting
sexuality of the “Vamp” series, but still in
keeping with the spirit of Ashcan realism,
Clivette painted many boldly rendered
portraits of American Indians. Clivette
inevitably diverged from the Ashcan realist
aesthetic by painting the human figure with
quirky distortions and unruly brushwork more
akin to Chaim Soutine. As his art matured he
moved further from realism towards
expressionism. His late work remained
figurative, but became increasingly abstract
in its composition and use of shallow
space.
Clivette
built his expressionist images by placing
one confident stroke after another; he
dragged and parried the brush over the
canvas with an acrobatic sense of timing. In
his largest works, gestural marks look as
though they were made as a direct result of
his body movements. Later New York artists
like Franz Kline, can be seen as kindred
spirits to Clivette through the use of
gestural mark-making as the content of their
painting. Clivette, a respected artist,
flourished in the New York art scene of the
1920’s. His historical standing and artistic
integrity rank him as an American
Expressionist of originality and
distinction.
j |
