#5 1979

Charles Clough made '#5' with paint, and collage on paper. Just look at those brushstrokes—bold, thick, and almost fighting with each other! It’s like he’s wrestling with the paint, trying to get it to do something it doesn’t want to. I can imagine Clough in his studio, maybe with some music blasting, totally in the zone, pushing the paint around with real energy. The colors are really something, aren’t they? The way he mixes those blues, pinks and oranges—they shouldn’t work together, but somehow, they do! I think of Guston, and how he used color to create a space that's both inviting and unsettling. And the collage elements peeking through, remind me of Rauschenberg, but Clough takes it somewhere totally new. Ultimately, painting is an ongoing conversation between artists across generations, and the real beauty lies in its ambiguity. There’s no right or wrong way to see it—it’s all about what you bring to it.