The pioneering work of Ed Clark
Often, in the art world, it can take years for an artist to receive their due recognition. This was certainly the case for abstract expressionist painter Ed Clark. Born in New Orleans in 1926, Clark’s race significantly impacted his ability to receive the full extent of accolades his pioneering modernist efforts deserved. As an African-American artist, he faced systemic barriers that delayed the recognition of his remarkable contributions to the art world.
Clark had a noticeable knack for drawing as a child and was encouraged by the nuns at his Roman Catholic school to explore this field. However, his life took a different turn after the outbreak of the Second World War. At 17, he left school to join the US Army Air Force, serving in an all-Black unit in Guam.
Art would come calling once more, though. After he left the military in 1946, Clark used the GI Bill of Rights to enrol in night classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Taught by the great impressionist Louis Ritman and revered intellectual Helen Gardner—who died later that year—this education provided him with a solid philosophical basis. There, he learnt to expand his skill set and weaponise his aptitude with a brush.
A naturally confident individual who would also become notorious for being something of a lothario and dalliances with the opposite sex, the enterprising Clark moved to Paris as part of the GI Bill in 1952, where he took up a place at Paris’ distinguished Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
Aged just 26, the thriving Paris art world opened Clark’s eyes with established revolutionaries such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse also on hand. This experience in the French capital changed the direction of Clark’s art, with him transforming from a figurative realist painter and into an abstract expressionist. Nicolas de Staël’s work had the most impact on this shift, with his blocks of extreme colour an ancestor of his emergent bold style.
In Paris, young Clark found himself in a radical environment brimming with creativity. He became part of the celebrated circle of Black American artists who had fled pervasive racism in the US, alongside notable figures like writer James Baldwin and painter Beauford Delaney. This community introduced him to artists such as Sam Francis, Al Held, and Joan Mitchell, whose influence helped shape his art and philosophy.
In 1955, Clark held his debut solo exhibition at Paris’ Galerie Creuze. During this period, he was forced to sell his art for financial support and dip into his grandmother’s inheritance after his GI benefits ran out. It was here that he formed a pivotal friendship with American artist George Sugarman, who saw great promise in Clark and encouraged him to relocate to New York City in 1956. Sugarman, a trailblazer in drawing, painting, and sculpture, recognised Clark’s talent and played a significant role in guiding his artistic path.
Together with other like-minded artists, they founded the cooperative Brata Gallery in the East Village. Yet, this chapter of Clark’s life also revealed the racial disparities of the era. Despite the cooperative’s efforts, Black artists like Clark faced significant obstacles, with their work largely ignored by the predominantly white art establishment in New York City. To make ends meet, Clark worked as an assistant in another gallery and was forced to rent out exhibition spaces he used to subvert the thinly veiled racism of the art world.
In New York, Clark would become a renowned and greatly respected figure among other artists. Still, he wouldn’t come to mainstream prominence until the 1980s when a now-famous ARTnews critique and the influential historian Corinne Robins explicitly discussed his pioneering efforts in American modernism. This would kick off a period of revisionism, which culminated in Clark being recognised as one of the innovators of abstract expressionism’s second generation. In 2013, he won the Art Institute of Chicago’s ‘Legends and Legacy Award’.
Clark’s life is brimming with fascinating anecdotes, but what he did for painting cannot be understated. In Paris in the mid-1950s, he stumbled across his signature technique, which would see him change how painting was considered. Desiring to cover a much larger area of canvas with straighter strokes than conventional paintbrushes and the humble human wrist allowed, he picked up a janitor’s broom. It was a simple bit of a genius but an instrumental one.
Placing a canvas on the floor, Clark used the broom to spread colour, creating horizontal lines that recalled the work of de Staël but with much broader strokes. Dubbing it his “big sweep”, this technique fuelled all of his most impressive work, such as 1976’s expressive Untitled and the tragic 1964 effort, Blacklash. The latter was created after that year’s Harlem protests that were provoked by the murder of 15-year-old James Powell at the hands of an off-duty policeman. This technique using acrylics on large canvases saw Clark employ colour and visuals with a wholly new effect and appeal to a myriad of emotions, from the devastating to the sublime.
In 1957, Clark bravely broke the traditional confines of the rectangular canvas. In his most famous Untitled piece from that year, painted paper parts of the surface protruded off the rectangle, another straightforward but tremendous move. This set the scene for him to play with visuals in more depth using oval canvases, which he thought matched human vision better than a rectangle.
Clark’s work became gradually more ethereal over the years, with trips to the arresting natural vistas of Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, China and Japan seeing him branch out and craft work of a different dimension to his earlier efforts. Experimenting with light and colour, these works are undoubtedly his most striking such as 1970’s oval Untitled and the exquisite Ife Rose from 1974.
While Clark used an array of spectacular colours, tapping deep into the intangible aspects of human existence, pink became his signature hue. It remains the most profound in his arsenal, speaking to life’s inherent beauty and tragedy. For evidence of this, look no further than Ife Rose and Pink Wave.
Ed Clark died aged 93 on October 18th, 2019, in Detroit. A collection of his works are currently on exhibition at Margate’s Turner Contemporary until September 1st.