Ian Hamilton Finlay
Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener (1925-2006)
Philip Guston
American artist (1913-1980)
Philip Gustonwas a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. “Guston worked in a number of artistic modes, from Renaissance-inspired figuration to formally accomplished abstraction,” and is now regarded as one of the “most important, powerful, and influential American painters of the last 100 years.” He frequently depicted racism, antisemitism, fascism and American identity, as well as, especially in his later most cartoonish and mocking work, the banality of evil.
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About the Philip Guston
Philip Gustonwas a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. “Guston worked in a number of artistic modes, from Renaissance-inspired figuration to formally accomplished abstraction,” and is now regarded as one of the “most important, powerful, and influential American painters of the last 100 years.” He frequently depicted racism, antisemitism, fascism and American identity, as well as, especially in his later most cartoonish and mocking work, the banality of evil. In 2013, Guston’s painting To Fellini set an auction record at Christie’s when it sold for $25.8 million.
Guston was a founding figure in the mid-century New York School, which established New York as the new center of the global art world, and his work appeared in the famed Ninth Street Show and in the avant-garde art journal It is. A Magazine for Abstract Art. By the 1960s, Guston had renounced abstract expressionism and was helping pioneer a modified form of representational art known as neo-expressionism. “Calling American abstract art ‘a lie’ and ‘a sham,’ he pivoted to making paintings in a dark, figurative style, including satirical drawings of Richard Nixon” during the Vietnam War as well as several paintings of hooded Klansmen, which Guston explained this way: “They are self-portraits … I perceive myself as being behind the hood … The idea of evil fascinated me … I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan.” The paintings of Klan figures were set to be part of an international retrospective sponsored by the National Gallery of Art, the Tate Modern, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2020, but in late September, the museums jointly postponed the exhibition until 2024, “a time at which we think that the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the center of Philip Guston’s work can be more clearly interpreted.”
The announcement spurred an open letter, published online by The Brooklyn Rail and signed by more than 2,000 artists. It criticizes the postponement and the museums’ lack of courage to display or attempt to interpret Guston’s work, as well as the museums’ own “history of prejudice”. It calls Guston’s KKK themes a timely catalyst for a “reckoning” with cultural and institutional white supremacy, and argues that that is why the exhibition must proceed without delay. On October 28, 2020, the museums announced earlier exhibition dates starting in 2022.
10 Quotes by Philip Guston
- 1.
The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see.
Philip GustonAmerican artist (1913-1980)
- 2.
Look at any inspired painting. It’s like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.
Philip GustonAmerican artist (1913-1980)
- 3.
Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.
Philip GustonAmerican artist (1913-1980)
- 4.
Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.
Philip GustonAmerican artist (1913-1980)
- 5.
I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over.
Philip GustonAmerican artist (1913-1980)
- 6.
I don’t know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.
Philip GustonAmerican artist (1913-1980)
- 7.
Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It’s the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe.
Philip GustonAmerican artist (1913-1980)
- 8.
In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don’t know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?
Philip GustonAmerican artist (1913-1980)
- 9.
To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.
Philip GustonAmerican artist (1913-1980)
- 10.
Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls into positions that feel destined.
Philip GustonAmerican artist (1913-1980)