Male and Female (DSB and JPM), Charles Clough

Exhibition Label: "NetWorks: Art and Artists from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection," Mar-2011, Susan Earle, Stephen Goddard, and SMA Interns Charles Clough’s artistic exploration has been integrally tied to his hometown of Buffalo, New York. In 1974, he and two other artists the Vogels would champion, Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman, co-founded Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo. The center has provided a stimulating venue for exhibitions and artistic collaborations. Clough developed a close relationship with Dorothy and Herbert Vogel during the 1980s, and his artworks loom large in the Vogel collection. Clough’s numerous paintings, books, and mixed-media artworks continue to explore a broad range of concepts that are informed by his droll and intellectually rich artistic approach. The artist writes, “I affirm the Aristotelian view of art as catharsis: that art provides a symbolic screen for psychological projection. Art is simultaneously ‘purposeless’ and socially useful through its emancipation of the imagination and its transformation of cruelty into symbol. Art offers the utopian moment-a sublime location for our terrific will.”