Once, the American painter Philip Guston (1913-1980) was a polarizing artist. It’s the stuff of legend: An esteemed second-generation Abstract Expressionist, renowned for exquisitely honed arrangements of fleshy brushstrokes, turns to a brutish figurative art—a nightmarish realm of Klansmen, endless hangovers and hellish rooms lit by bare light bulbs. Critic Peter Schjeldahl recalls that many Read More
The retrospective of paintings and drawings by the American artist Philip Guston (1913-1980), currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, must be a publicist’s dream. Will there be a single unfavorable review? I doubt it. Guston is a rarity in the fractious world of contemporary art, a touchstone for people who have-aesthetically speaking-little else in Read More
Guston, Vindicated Underdog,
A Man Who Changed His Mind
The retrospective of paintings and drawings by the American artist Philip Guston (1913-1980), currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, must be a publicist’s dream. Will there be a single unfavorable review? I doubt it. Guston is a rarity in the fractious world of contemporary Read More
The Life and Times Of Richard Nixon
Last winter, I kvetched when Frank Stout lampooned Richard Nixon by including him in one of his signature conventioneer paintings. This fall, I’m kvelling over Philip Guston’s Poor Richard, a series of pen-and-ink drawings from 1971 that chronicle the late President’s life, times, machinations and foibles.
