Tag Archives for Philip Guston

“No good to paint in the Head”

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“No good to paint in the head – what happens is what happens when you put the paint down – you can only hope that you are alert – ready – to see. What joy it  is for paint to become a thing – a being. Believe in this miracle – it is your only hope. To will this transformation is not possible. Only a  slow maturation can prepare the hand and eye to become quicker than ever. Ideas about art don’t matter. They collapse anyway in front of the painting.” ~ Philip Guston, November 23rd,  1978. From ‘Philip Guston – Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations‘ 2011.

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Philip Guston – The Law

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“The Laws of Art are generous laws. They are not definable because they are not fixed. These Laws are revealed to the Artist during creation and cannot be given to him. They are not knowable. A work cannot begin with these laws as in a diagram.
They can only be sensed as a work unfolds. When the forms and spaces move toward their destined positions, the artist is then permitted to become a victim of these Laws, the prepared and innocent accomplice for the completion of the work.” ~ Philip Guston – The Law

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David Sylvester on Philip Guston’s paintings (Circa 1963)

“Guston’s paintings, indeed, have little immediate impact, apart from that of the sheer prettiness of those of 1947-55. They are intensely withdrawn and private, with the privacy of the dark not of the ivory tower. They are the acting-out of long uneasy meditations that have to end in doubt. At one level the uneasiness and doubt are obviously about painting itself, what it can do, should do, should not do, to be authentic. The very indulgence in the wealth of painting’s possibilities serves to extend the area of doubt. In the later works there is doubt above all about the degree in which paint on canvas can allude to the reality of nature without loss of it’s own intrinsic reality, its own autonomy and vitality and eloquence……….
Are the doubt and anguish related only to the responsibilities and trials of painting itself or do they embrace something more – are they ‘about life’ as well as about art? The question is unanswerable and beside the point. What matters is that these paintings are palpably about a man’s struggle with himself and reflect its reality and urgency. What matters still more is that in their very doubt and desperation they become affirmative. They are intensely private and self-enclosed and yet they exist there on the wall as rather large canvases, statements on a public scale, and they fit that scale. Again, the more recent works (which seem to me the finest) are so packed with doubts and denials as to have gone far beyond the brink of what we think of as coherence and to be just about the messiest pieces of painting ever to be exhibited as works of art. And yet these muddy colours glow with something of the refulgence of the Venetians.” ~ David Sylvester, Guston, 1963 (this is from a review of a retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery which appeared, entitled ‘Luxurious’, in the New Statesman, 15th Feb 1963).

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Philip Guston on painting

Drawing, Untitled, 1967, Philip Guston

 

 

 

“And of course this state which you are preparing for – to get into this state, this other world – demands extreme attention, so that things can be happening. It’s a state where you can catch it or miss it”. ~ Philip Guston

 

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Philip Guston: Late Paintings

Philip Guston: Late Paintings @ Inverleith House

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh 25 July – 7 October

'The Studio', 1969, by Phillip Guston

“The first exhibition by the great American artist to be staged in Scotland, Philip Guston: Late
Paintings features major works from 1969 to 1978, shown in the naturally-lit rooms of Inverleith House overlooking the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Born in Montreal, Canada, Philip Guston
(1913–80) grew up in Los Angeles where he attended high school with Jackson Pollock. Largely self-taught and politically aware, he worked in the 1930s as a mural painter in Mexico and the US. Moving to New York, he became a celebrated member of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s. In 1967 Guston left New York for the small town of Woodstock, NY and reintroduced figuration to his paintings; cartoon-like in quality they began to incorporate images familiar to him since childhood – from the hooded figures of the Ku Klux Klan, to everyday objects such as lightbulbs, shoes and cigarettes. When these paintings were shown for the first time in 1970, they proved highly controversial but rapidly gained critical recognition. The ‘late’ paintings made during the last 14 years of the artist’s life are now widely regarded as some of the most compelling and influential works of the late 20th century.
The exhibition is presented with the support of the Artist’s Estate and the McKee Gallery, New
York.

An illustrated catalogue featuring an interview with the art historian Dr. David Anfam and an essay by the writer Philip Larratt-Smith accompanies the exhibition.” (from the press release)

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