Philip Guston's Cartoonish Paintings

Right, Philip Guston in his Woodstock studio a few months before his 1970 Marlborough Gallery show. Photograph by Frank R. Lloyd. Left, Philip Guston, Scared Stiff, Private Collection. © The Estate of Philip Guston

 

Philip Guston’s Cartoonish Paintings

by Larry Baumhor

 

Self-taught rebel artist Philip Guston defied the art world spitting in the face of his former abstract expressionist style for a comical brutal figurative style, holding a mirror up to American culture and politics. The directors at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and Tate Modern postponed their scheduled Guston exhibit and all hell broke loose in the art world. Matthew Teitelbaum, director of MFA in Boston wrote that “how we present the work needs to be reconsidered because the work has changed since we first envisioned the exhibition.” Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery stated that Guston “appropriated images of Black trauma, the show needs to be more than Guston.” Ms. Feldman is referring to Guston’s paintings of Ku Klux Klan figures. Mark Godfrey, curator of international art at the Tate Museum was suspended for publicly criticizing the museum’s decision to postpone the Guston show. Godfrey posted on his Instagram account, “Viewers are assumed not to be able to appreciate the nuance and politics of Guston’s works.” The museums were concerned that Guston’s cartoonish Ku Klux Klan figures could offend some visitors to the show. In an open letter to the Brooklyn Rail more than 2,600 artists, curators, writers, and critics signed a protest letter about the postponement of the Philip Guston shows. “These institutions thus publicly acknowledge their longstanding failure to have educated, integrated, and prepared themselves to meet the challenge of the renewed pressure for racial justice that has developed over the past five years. And they abdicate responsibility for doing so immediately, yet again. Better, they reason, to postpone the exhibition until a time when the significance of Guston’s work will be clearer to its public,” the Brooklyn Rail, originally published on September 30, 2020, https://brooklynrail.org/projects/on-philip-guston-now/. Guston’s daughter, Musa Mayer stated that my father “exposed the banality of evil and the systemic racism we are still struggling to confront today.” The George Floyd murder and Trump stating there were very fine people among those white supremacists who marched into Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

I visited the Philip Guston, 1969 – 1979 exhibit at the Hauser & Worth Gallery, 542 W. 22nd Street, New York, ending October 30, 2021.

Some of the paintings have never been exhibited before. During this fertile 10-year period, Guston said goodbye to abstraction and hello to figurative cartoon-like imagery.

 

 

Pittore: photo by Larry Baumhor

Pittore is a self-portrait of Guston lying in bed with his paintbrushes and pigments next to him. A clock invades the frame indicating a connection with time as though both negative and positive things happened in the past and future. Guston had many demons, smoking and drinking heavily and bouts of depression. By placing himself in the painting Guston is forced to look at his place in the world as a human and a painter. “Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation,” Philip Guston.

 

 

The Studio: photo by Larry Baumhor

The Studio is an iconic painting. Guston depicts himself painting and smoking a cigar, nothing glamorous here, a transformation of humanity’s potential to hate and slaughter as blood-red marks are splattered on the painting.

 

 

Entrance: photo by Larry Baumhor

The Entrance depicts disembodied legs, shields, bugs, doors, and shoes, horrifying images that the media portrayed after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the carnage of the Vietnam War.

 

Sleeping: photo by Larry Baumhor

Sleeping is a self-portrait of Guston, sleeping under a blanket wearing shoes. Guston was influenced by Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna who painted Christ in solitary in a tightly closed dark space. Your eyes are laser beams focused on the feet.

 

Back View: photo by Larry Baumhor

Back View is a figure walking away from the viewer, burdened by shoes, legs, shields that look like trash can lids. Guston had a traumatic childhood and the memories haunted him through his life and influenced his art. His brother died in an automobile accident. Guston’s father hung himself and he discovered his father’s limp body lifeless. Can you imagine? His father was a junk man often picking through trash, thus objects in Guston’s paintings can be found in the garbage.

 

Philip Guston, Odd Man Out (video documentary, BBC4 arts, 2004)

 

Blackboard: photo by Larry Baumhor

Cartoonish Blackboard represents civil unrest in the 1960s. This depiction is not an act of terror but rather a routine of daily life, perhaps kids drawing on the blackboard or Casper the Friendly Ghost. 

 

Painter’s Hand: photo by Larry Baumhor

Following Guston’s critical massacre of his 1970 Marlborough Gallery exhibition, he and his wife Musa left for Rome where he studied the Italian masters of his youth. Upon returning to his home in Woodstock, New York, Guston began to remove the hood from his paintings. He spent many overnight sessions in his studio painting as he subconsciously delved deep into his psyche for emotional inspiration. "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 Guston.

 

Open Window II: photo by Larry Baumhor

In the late 1960s, Guston referred to the Klan figures as “little bastards” citing Russian-Jewish writer and journalist Isaac Babel, who witnessed anti-Semitic atrocities. “I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan. What would it be like to be evil,” Guston wrote.

 

Tears: photo by Larry Baumhor

Guston, created Tears after his wife suffered a stroke, expressing human pain, aging, and illness.

 

San Clemente (1975) by Philip Guston. © Estate of Philip Guston, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth

(This painting of Richard Nixon was not in the show.)

Nixon is depicted weeping and in agony with a phlebitis inflamed leg. Critic Peter Schieldahl stated that “Guston’s Nixon is an almost tragic figure, imprisoned in his own comical anatomy.” Guston moved to New York City in the late 1940s. He was involved with the abstract art movement. He attended high school in Los Angeles with Jackson Pollock who encouraged Guston to move to New York. But with the civil unrest and upheaval of the 1960s, Guston became interested in cartoon-styled realism. As a boy Guston loved comics. Philip Guston was born in Montreal, Canada, June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980. He was the youngest of seven children born to Jewish parents who came to America after fleeing persecution in Ukraine. He changed his name from Goldstein to Guston to appease his future in-laws, the parents of Musa McKim. If you think you’re attending the Guston exhibit to view holocaust frightening images, to view the civil unrest of the 1960s, to view art ugliness, to receive a subliminal message, and to be shocked. Think again! The Hauser & Worth Gallery is a vast fantasy land, a venue of transference, a place to escape, a venue to become mesmerized with joy. Guston’s paintings are huge and you begin to feel you’re in the Land of Oz. The paintings are up to 80 by 112 inches. You’re lost in this environment of wonderment! You’re awe-struck and your mouth opens and your jaw hangs loose. You question what am I looking at but at the same time you don’t care. You’re trapped in a state of astonishment. You leave the gallery saying I was just blown away, from what I don’t know. The exhibit haunts you and won’t leave forcing me to see the show for a second time. I hope you see it once before it closes on October 30, 2021. “Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see,” Philip Guston