Philip Guston: abstract expressionism's provocative pioneer and ultimate critic - Museum Today - Biography

BEGINNING with his childhood fascination with popular American comic strips; through mural painting laden with political imagery; to easel painting and a burgeoning interest in, advancement of, and ultimate disenchantment with Abstract Expressionism; through his invention of a highly controversial figurative mode of painting and drawing that influenced younger artists, Philip Guston (1913-80) courageously changed styles according to his beliefs and in response to social and political issues of the day.

"Philip Guston ... reflects influences ranging from the great Italian quattrocento masters Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello, to [Jean-Antoine] Watteau, to the early 20th-century works of [Giorgio] de Chirico, [Pablo] Picasso, and [Piet] Mondrian, as well as the popular American cartoon," notes Philippe de Montebello, director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. "Guston's particular genius was in mediating such seemingly diverse traditions, and, with fluent brushstrokes that speak to the artist's hand and brilliant color, creating works that vigorously defied conventions. He was a compelling figure who charted a course that was often contradictory, yet always courageous from an aesthetic and theoretical standpoint."

Highlights of his career include the "Drawing for Conspirators" (1930)--the artist's first reaction to the cruelties of the Ku Klux Klan--the tondo "Bombardment" (c. 1937-38) and "The Tormentors" (1947-48), which, together with "White Painting" (1951), documents Guston's transition from Symbolic Realism into abstraction. Works that richly demonstrate Guston's personal interpretation of the Abstract Expressionist movement include "Zone" (1953-54), "Painting" (1954), and "To Fellini" (1958) and other nuanced works. Following a group of transitional drawings and paintings of the 1960s, "Edge of Town," "The Law," and "The Studio"--all from 1969--and "Courtroom" (1970) incorporate Klan imagery used both to comment on political issues of the day and to represent the artist surrounded by common artifacts. These were first seen in Guston's controversial 1970 Marlborough Gallery exhibition in New York. "Painting, Smoking, Eating" (1973), "Wharf" (1976), the powerful battle scene "The Street" (1977), and "Talking" (1979), further display Guston's autobiographical symbolism. Moreover, his painting, "San Clemente" (1975), depicting Pres. Richard Nixon, illustrates the artist's frustration with American politics during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Guston brought a distinct combination of moral intensity and probing self-reflection to his art. He was the youngest of seven children born to Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Ukraine, in 1913 in Montreal, Can. Guston, whose original surname was Goldstein, moved as a child with his family to Los Angeles, Calif. After witnessing his father's depression and finding him following his suicide, the young Guston retreated to a place of literal isolation--a closet illuminated by a single light bulb--and began a lifelong career in art through an intense engagement with cartoons of his own invention. The light bulb later became a prevailing image in Guston's mature work. At Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, he met and became a friend of artist Jackson Pollock.

In his early schooling, art instruction, and throughout his career, Guston devotedly studied art history. His influences were broad, ranging from the Italian Renaissance masters of the 15th century to modern European artists such as Paul Cezanne, Fernand Leger, and Mondrian. His mural paintings of the 1930s were inspired by the great Mexican artists David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and Jose Clemente Orozco. He also was influenced by de Chirico's haunting Italian cityscapes.

After moving to New York City in 1935, where he renewed his friendship with Pollock, Guston met and saw the work of many of his contemporaries--Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, among others. Together they would form the center of the major American art movement that became known as Abstract Expressionism, which took root in New York in the mid 1940s. Guston arrived slightly later at his personal version of the style. Gradually, Guston shifted from painting public murals to working privately in the studio at an easel. During this period, he accepted university teaching positions that brought him to cities in the Midwest.

Guston's imagery of the 1950s and early 1960s is considered to be as complex and as moving as other works produced by the movement. His emphasis on the brushstroke--what he saw as the most fundamental act of marking, the cornerstone of painting, the essence of an artist's style--remains one of his enduring legacies. The application and a continuing inquiry into structure, recalling the "plus and minus" compositions of the mid teens by Mondrian, became the chief pictorial components for Guston's Abstract Expressionism and are among his most significant contributions to the movement. In addition to his devotion to drawing and painting, the artist also was an avid reader of philosophy, fiction, and poetry and he was a writer as well as charismatic educator, continuing to teach through much of his career. In 1965, he helped found the New York Studio School for Drawing and Painting. As his health began to deteriorate in the 1970s, however, Guston became increasingly withdrawn. He retreated from the Manhattan art scene and spent most of his time at his home and studio in Woodstock, N.Y., where he continued the autobiographical figuration he had begun in the late 1960s. After Musa, his wife of 40 years, suffered a stroke in 1977, and after his own nearly fatal heart attack in 1979, he painted figurative works and intimate portraits. From this period came "Couple in Bed" (1977), "Sleeping" (1977), and a group of small acrylics in 1980.