Still Magnet/PH-181, 1947

The Clyfford Still Museum is situated in Denver, Colorado, at the foot of the Rockies at an elevation that makes those unused to this altitude gasp. When we ascend to the top of a ridge and look out at the vast expanse, we might enjoy a sense of achievement at scaling that terrain or revel at the expanse that spreads before us, but we may also experience the smallness of our own individual existence. This experience might be tinged with a fear of tumbling, being engulfed, or disappearing in the face of such grandeur. Generations of Western artists and intellectuals, especially beginning in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, have described this feeling as the experience of the sublime.