Guston at 100

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The New York Sun

Generations of artists admire Philip Guston (1913-1980) for forgoing the elegant, well-received abstract expressionist works he made during the 1950s and 60s in favor of clunky, cartoonishly figurative, autobiographical paintings, cooked up in a frenzy of creativity during the last twelve years of his life. An exhibition at McKee Gallery, calling itself a “spontaneous celebration” to commemorate Guston’s one-hundredth birthday, focuses on this late figurative period.

Though he died over thirty years ago, Guston’s late works continue to shape today’s art world. Contemporary painters and sculptors frequently cite Guston as a primary influence and criticism of the artist’s late neo-expressionist canvases amounts to heresy in artistic circles. Brooklyn-based painter Amy Sillman, whose first museum retrospective will open in Boston in October, said in an interview “the most important painter that I’ve looked at in my life who seems to always inform me is Philip Guston.” And New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, on record as having “hated” Guston’s neo-expressionist works when they were first exhibited in 1970 at Marlborough Gallery, says “I now regard that work as the most important American painting of its time.”

McKee Gallery claims their current show features “works which have not been widely exhibited.” At times, however, it looks like the gallery is attempting to clear its racks of some minor pieces. This may not be the centennial celebration Guston’s many admirers hoped for, but the paintings here are thought-provoking in light of the widespread influence Guston has on artists today.

The oldest piece in this exhibition, The Year, a large, somber canvas of black, gray and red wiggly strokes from 1964, is among the last abstract paintings Guston made. By 1965 the artist had stopped painting altogether, focusing instead on drawing. When Guston took up the brush again in 1968, a private language of loaded symbols emerged in the artist’s work.

Hanging on either side of The Year are examples of these first representational works, small gouache or acrylic paintings on panels, images of open books, splattered shoes and klansmen. One of these early gouaches, Book, 1968, is particularly charming. Painted with just black and white, a gray haze of strokes provides the background for a sturdy little book that emerges out of Guston’s process of painting, erasing and repainting. Rather than text, the pages are full of small vertical strokes, ancient morphemes with some mysterious meaning.

Dawn, 1970, the earliest of the large-scale oils presented here, is a highlight of the McKee exhibition. In the center of the horizontal canvas, two klansmen in a car seem to be in mid-conversation, perhaps discussing directions, as they drive through the composition. Legs, shoes and wooden boards are partially obscured by the car and in the distance Guston has painted some architectural elements. A soft, tangerine-colored sun sits in the sky and telephone poles frame the scene.

Waking Up, a large work from 1975, however, falls flat. A ghoulish, one-eyed Guston, smoking in bed, watches as outlined feet and faces march by his bedside. The canvas, made with just red, black and white paint, seemingly straight from the tube, is unsatisfying for its lack of attention to chromatic relationships and heavy reliance on line to distinguish forms. When the background is black, forms are outlined in white. When the background is red, outlines are black, as if Guston, in the throes of creation, couldn’t be bothered to mix colors. All but two pieces in the show are for sale, including this work. It’s no wonder this canvas has been bouncing around for so long. According to records from Christie’s, Waking Up was initially purchased from McKee Gallery, then sold again at auction in 2004 for almost 1.2 million dollars, and now it’s back at McKee, for sale again.

Another canvas, Forms on a Rock Ledge, 1979, is also underwhelming. Amputated legs, a turned painting, a magnet and a trashcan lid pile up on a loosely sketched rock-like structure. The frame on this work (and even the face of the painting itself) is scuffed up, one assumes from being pulled off and then returned back to the gallery racks over and over. Forms on a Rock Ledge is part of the Guston estate, represented by McKee Gallery.

With his fierce intellect and commitment to creating paintings that expressed a complicated inner life, Philip Guston expanded our notion of what art can be. His unedited, free-flowing studio practice led to many innovative, expressive works, and his approach continues to be an enormous influence on artists today. However, in this centennial exhibit Guston’s fallibility is on display, inviting viewers to question the process that gave rise to both top-notch images and some flops, and providing an excellent opportunity to reevaluate one of the icons of 20th century art.

Philip Guston: A Centennial Exhibition, on view through April 20, 2013, McKee Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 212-688-5951, www.mckeegallery.com

More information about Xico Greenwald’s work can be found at xicogreenwald.com


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