Art: In the Right Hands

His huge, enigmatic abstract slabs of saturated oil are widely sought after, but Clyfford Still, 60, is pretty picky about who gets them. “A painting in the wrong hands,” he says, “is a highly dangerous force, like an equation.” He tells about a young man who wanted to buy several of his works and asked, “Mr. Still, what are you trying to say?” Still answered: “You want an epigram, don’t you?” The young man nodded. “So I threw him out,” said Still.

Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art had to wait two years to buy a Still. But Buffalo’s burgeoning Albright-Knox Art Gallery is a museum to Still’s taste. He admired Director Gordon Smith’s willingness in 1959 to show 72 Still paintings all at once, because Still believes that he cannot be under stood properly in small doses. Last week he gave 31 paintings (estimated value: more than $1,000,000) to the Albright-Knox, possibly an alltime record for an artist’s generosity.