Charles Clough: The Early Work
Linda Cathcart
Linda L. Cathcart, “Charles Clough: The Early Work,” in Charles Clough. Buffalo: The Buffalo Fine
Arts Academy, 1983, pp. 7-12. Catalogue published in conjunction with exhibitions Charles Clough:
Recent Work, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, April 8-May 8, 1983, and Charles
Clough: Selections 1972-1981, Burchfield Center, State University College at Buffalo, New York,
April 8-May 8, 1983. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher.
(Linda Cathcart, is the former director of the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Texas)

Charles Clough’s work is quite independent in method and visual result from that of his peers.
Figurative in reference, decidedly expressionistic in technique, and utilizing scavenged images from
art history as well as from current commercial sources, it does share certain qualities with other
contemporary paintings. Yet, any of the categories applied to his contemporaries would fail to conjure
up either a useful image or a feeling of what Charlie Clough’s work is all about. This is an artist who
has a particularly original point of view about the meaning of art and who has gone about it in a
unique way.
My acquaintance with Clough’s work occurred almost simultaneously with my assumption of duties
as assistant curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo in January of 1975. On practically the
first day of my new post, I was visited by two artists with whom I was to form a long lasting
friendship. The artists were Charles Clough and Robert Longo. They came to my office to visit and
involve me in their work and that of their friends. Just prior to my arrival they had formed an art
organization which was to have an importance for the community of Buffalo (the home of a great
museum and numerous universities, including Buffalo State College with its Burchfield Center), as
well as an even greater art world audience all over the country.
The mid ‘70s were a critical time for artists. Clough, Longo, and their friends, Cindy Sherman,
Michael Zwack and Nancy Dwyer, typified Buffalo artists who were coming of age at this time. All of
them were admirers of the great collection of nineteenth and twentieth century art housed at the
Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The works there served as an inspiration as well as a resource for these
artists who wanted to be part of the continuum of art history. During the late ‘60s a degree of
alienation between institutions and non-traditional artists had occurred. Clough and Longo wanted to
make contact with the museum to learn more about art and to function better as artists themselves.
Luckily their enthusiasm and mine for contemporary art was encouraged by Director Robert Buck,
who saw that an institution needed contact with living artists, especially ones who were also interested
in the museum, to stay alive and vital. On that first day of our meeting, Clough and Longo took me to
their studios in an old ice house. Between the two studio areas was a space in which they hoped to
show their own work and that of other artists. They had dubbed it Hallwalls.
I liked Clough’s work in a simple way. I admired the direct style in which he worked, even though it
was not easy to categorize or define its concerns. An example is the first work which Clough was
invited to exhibit at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. For the 1977 show entitled In Western New York,
which was organized by Douglas G. Schultz and me, Clough made a work on site of a complex
nature which appeared very different from those we had seen in his studio. That work had a wheel of
fortune-like apparatus, in which an angel figure was revealed by turning the wheel and was
accompanied by a separate wooden cut-out that seemed to represent devils, and also by some painting
directly applied to the walls Although this work at first seemed unrelated to his earlier manipulated
drawings and environmental pieces, there were certain elements of the technique which were
continuous to his style.
For some time Clough had been taking color photographs which he was incorporating into his larger,
more complicated works. By 1976 they were collaged onto board or paper and heavily painted. The
photographs were of many things, but an image of an image that occurred often was one of eyes. The
eye is the organ by which the viewer first perceives the work of art, and Clough used the eye as a
reminder of this. It was also unsettling to have artwork that seemed to look back at the observer.
These pieces, like his installation at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the first work I saw, were
typified by heavy brushwork and the obvious use of the artist’s mark—the evidence of his hand in the
gestures recorded. These early works were fresh and unsettling in their roughness. As noted
previously, Clough and Longo had originally formed Hallwalls not only to show their own works,
but to have a place to invite artists whom they admired, to exhibit and talk. Among the first artists they
invited to Buffalo were sculptor Robert Irwin and conceptual/performance artists Willoughby Sharp
and Vito Acconci. The choice of these particular artists is indicative of Clough’s passion for art which
is symbolic and metaphoric.
These two elements—the symbolic and the metaphoric—have continued to sustain Clough’s
explorations. For example, the photographic element in his work is from what Clough refers to as
“bits of photographs [which] constitute my personal image bank (part of the larger public media pool),
my mulch pile, cess pool, primal soup from which I evolve my many cultures...[The photography]
shows faith in technology. That anything of value will become an image multiplied many times and
from this plenitude of pictures will come sweet inspiration”.
The development of several series grew out of a group of works Clough called “clouds” (1977). They
were made by gluing magazine reproductions to large sheets of white paper and then applying paint.
In the “paint creatures” (1977-78) the paint began to form figures, and then the “X” and “Y” figures
(1978) Clough incorporated actual references to sexual gender.
As the work expanded in size and content, a figure of sorts was beginning to form. The early “paint
creatures” were figures made of highly colored, frenetically, intensely brushed paint. Before that, his
works were expressionistic paintings, into which were collaged reproductions of paintings by
contemporary masters—from Willem de Kooning to Frank Stella. In both groups of works,
simultaneously concealing and revealing, as well as negating and emphasizing these, Clough sought
to find the things in those great pictures which touched him while also making the viewer go through
the same visual examinations. Clough’s method of working and his development as an artist
demonstrate a tendency to re-create art history or at least paint his way through contemporary art’s
concerns. In his notes there are constantly entries like “a reference to Johns” and “this work
responded to cave painting, LeWitt, Borofsky, antimaterialism,” both of which appear in reference to
installations.
Clough’s “human” totems (1977-79) grew into larger images which were even more obviously
figures; they had legs and sometimes arms, and were vibrant with color and exuberant paint strokes.
Why did these figures depend on existing images for their life? Because the images reverberated with
multiple meanings for both the artist and the viewer. These “paint creature” were followed by a series
of paintings (1979-81) which are titled with the initials of the names of friends and relatives. In order
to tie his work back to his own private life and those human forms he knew, Clough began this series
of male and female “portraits”, also designated as “X”s and “Y”s. The portraits were groups of
figures, and they were—like the first pencil drawing I saw—cut out to make them more specific in
meaning. In these works, Clough pays homage to an artist he admires very much—de Kooning. The
last of these pieces were then shown in groupings which implied possible word meanings—if each
piece is taken to represent a letter. The specificity found in this work was to continue into his later
pieces.
Like most of the other “first generation” Hallwalls-affiliated artists, Clough moved to New York City.
In 1978, motivated by both the desire to join the larger groups of artists with which he had formed
friendships through programs at Hallwalls in Buffalo and by the desire to face the larger challenge of
the New York City art world, Clough left the place where he had seen so much of the art which
inspired his own growing vision. In New York, Clough faced all of the problems typical to young
and penniless artists. He found a loft-type space and set to work.
At first, his work did not differ considerably from what he had made in Buffalo. He was not surprised
by the wealth of information that the city provided, having made frequent trips to Manhattan before his
move, and because of his wide reading of art periodicals. He did just as he had done in Buffalo and
began to utilize the visual information available through his surroundings.
Clough has been able to connect his own work directly with the tradition established by American
painters, while maintaining his own singular style and viewpoint. His open admiration of the modern
masters has been directly acknowledged by its incorporation in his art. He has the ability to assimilate
and preserve the integrity of those images he adopts, yet at the same time make them his own. Like
many of his fellow artists at this time, Clough often uses second generation images. His purpose,
however, is different in that his first passion is painting. Each of his works centers on the artist’s
ability to make a potent and beautiful image—an image which is first and foremost identified by its
qualities as a piece of art. By the use of a highly-developed sense of color and an increasingly
sophisticated method of composition, Clough has managed to make clear to the viewer his wish to be
a powerful painter. That his paintings have a personal as well as universal content to draw upon, in
addition to a distinct technique, places him among our most interesting young painters