Philip Guston

LANG & FRITSCH • PHILIP GUSTON: LOCATING THE IMAGE

The act of drawing is what locates, suggests, discovers …

On a lucky day, a surprising balance of forms and spaces will appear and I feel the drawing making itself, the image taking hold Philip Guston, 1973

9 781910 807408

PHILIP GUSTON LOCATING THE IMAGE

Curators’ Introduction Lena Fritsch and Karen Lang

The act of drawing is what locates, suggests, discovers …

Philip Guston, 1973

Fig.1 Philip Guston, Slope II, 1961. Oil on paper, mounted on canvas, 101.6 x 80 cm.

Private Collection

6

Philip Guston (1913–1980) was an internationally acclaimed American artist whose response to the political and social tumult of the post-war decades resulted in a prolific artistic output. Over the course of his career, his style transformed from figuration to abstraction to figuration.

Born Phillip Goldstein, the artist began drawing incessantly at the age of twelve. Aware of antisemitism, he changed his name in 1935, the year he moved to New York. After producing award-winning murals in a ‘realist’ style for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s and early 1940s, Guston embraced the painting trend of Abstract Expressionism. The upheavals of the 1960s – civil rights protests, brutal state violence, race riots – made him question the relevance of gestural abstraction, however, and his drawing explored the new figuration for which he is best known. In response to the Vietnam War and the hypocrisy of the political administration under President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, his figurative drawing intensified to address universal issues facing modern humankind. Guston’s productive output was driven by his desire to unify the ‘story’ and the plastic structure of the artwork in response to a changing political and social landscape. ‘Locating the image’ through intensive periods of drawing was central to this.

Philip Guston’s recent museum shows include a large-scale exhibition of his late work at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt in 2014 and the Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice in 2017. In the UK 7

Curators’ Introduction Lena Fritsch and Karen Lang

The act of drawing is what locates, suggests, discovers …

Philip Guston, 1973

Fig.1 Philip Guston, Slope II, 1961. Oil on paper, mounted on canvas, 101.6 x 80 cm.

Private Collection

6

Philip Guston (1913–1980) was an internationally acclaimed American artist whose response to the political and social tumult of the post-war decades resulted in a prolific artistic output. Over the course of his career, his style transformed from figuration to abstraction to figuration.

Born Phillip Goldstein, the artist began drawing incessantly at the age of twelve. Aware of antisemitism, he changed his name in 1935, the year he moved to New York. After producing award-winning murals in a ‘realist’ style for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s and early 1940s, Guston embraced the painting trend of Abstract Expressionism. The upheavals of the 1960s – civil rights protests, brutal state violence, race riots – made him question the relevance of gestural abstraction, however, and his drawing explored the new figuration for which he is best known. In response to the Vietnam War and the hypocrisy of the political administration under President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, his figurative drawing intensified to address universal issues facing modern humankind. Guston’s productive output was driven by his desire to unify the ‘story’ and the plastic structure of the artwork in response to a changing political and social landscape. ‘Locating the image’ through intensive periods of drawing was central to this.

Philip Guston’s recent museum shows include a large-scale exhibition of his late work at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt in 2014 and the Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice in 2017. In the UK 7

his work was included in two exhibitions at the Royal Academy, London in 2017: America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s and Abstract Expressionism. A large retrospective will open next year, touring the US and UK. This exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, curated by Professor Karen Lang with Dr Lena Fritsch, is the first solo show of Guston’s work in Oxford. His artistic language, characterised by masterful technique, exuberant stylistic variety and the depiction of everyday objects, is readily recognisable.

The exhibition introduces Guston’s art to visitors who may be unfamiliar with it by displaying works on paper from each stylistic phase. At the same time, it presents a new understanding to those familiar with Guston’s practice by focusing on two themes: the role of drawing on the one hand, and the inspiration he took from literature on the other. Selected works by Guston are displayed in juxtaposition with works from the museum’s historical collections by Gui Xia, Domenico Tiepolo and Paul Klee, to name but a few. The project also features books and journals from Guston’s personal library. This material, exhibited in public here for the first time, draws attention to his abiding interest in European art and literature.

There are many reasons to present Philip Guston’s work in 2019–20 and at the Ashmolean Museum. Against the background of our current political climate in the US and UK, it seems particularly important to exhibit an intellectual, political artist who was not afraid to express criticism against the ruling regime.

As his signature to an open letter in support of the French intellectuals who opposed the Algerian War (published in 1961 in the journal Partisan Review) attests, Guston was convinced ‘that the right to disobedience exists’ (Fig.2).1 The exhibition at the Ashmolean coincides with Professor Karen Lang’s Slade Lectures on Philip Guston in the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. Accompanying Professor Lang’s research findings, the display provides museum visitors with the opportunity visually to experience original comparisons

of Guston’s works and the art-historical and literary sources that stimulated his creativity. The University Museum’s rich historical collections cross times and cultures: they provide a suitable context for an artist inspired by diverse works of art, ranging from China to Italy to Germany.

In the Ashmolean’s exhibition programme, the project fills in the historical period between two recent shows of modern art from the United States: America’s Cool Modernism in 2018 and Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean in 2019. Above all, however, it is the permanence of Guston’s art that make this exhibition significant – his works have lost none of their meaning and power, or their relevance in our time.

This publication introduces Guston’s works in the exhibition and themes he returned to over the course of an intensive artistic career. The book contextualises and reveals this material anew through comparisons with works in the Ashmolean’s historical collections, focussing on selected themes in a compact and accessible way. Professor Lang’s Slade Lectures will expand upon the exhibition and publication.

8

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Overleaf: Fig.2 Letter published in the Partisan Review, 1961, signed by Philip Guston

his work was included in two exhibitions at the Royal Academy, London in 2017: America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s and Abstract Expressionism. A large retrospective will open next year, touring the US and UK. This exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, curated by Professor Karen Lang with Dr Lena Fritsch, is the first solo show of Guston’s work in Oxford. His artistic language, characterised by masterful technique, exuberant stylistic variety and the depiction of everyday objects, is readily recognisable.

The exhibition introduces Guston’s art to visitors who may be unfamiliar with it by displaying works on paper from each stylistic phase. At the same time, it presents a new understanding to those familiar with Guston’s practice by focusing on two themes: the role of drawing on the one hand, and the inspiration he took from literature on the other. Selected works by Guston are displayed in juxtaposition with works from the museum’s historical collections by Gui Xia, Domenico Tiepolo and Paul Klee, to name but a few. The project also features books and journals from Guston’s personal library. This material, exhibited in public here for the first time, draws attention to his abiding interest in European art and literature.

There are many reasons to present Philip Guston’s work in 2019–20 and at the Ashmolean Museum. Against the background of our current political climate in the US and UK, it seems particularly important to exhibit an intellectual, political artist who was not afraid to express criticism against the ruling regime.

As his signature to an open letter in support of the French intellectuals who opposed the Algerian War (published in 1961 in the journal Partisan Review) attests, Guston was convinced ‘that the right to disobedience exists’ (Fig.2).1 The exhibition at the Ashmolean coincides with Professor Karen Lang’s Slade Lectures on Philip Guston in the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. Accompanying Professor Lang’s research findings, the display provides museum visitors with the opportunity visually to experience original comparisons

of Guston’s works and the art-historical and literary sources that stimulated his creativity. The University Museum’s rich historical collections cross times and cultures: they provide a suitable context for an artist inspired by diverse works of art, ranging from China to Italy to Germany.

In the Ashmolean’s exhibition programme, the project fills in the historical period between two recent shows of modern art from the United States: America’s Cool Modernism in 2018 and Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean in 2019. Above all, however, it is the permanence of Guston’s art that make this exhibition significant – his works have lost none of their meaning and power, or their relevance in our time.

This publication introduces Guston’s works in the exhibition and themes he returned to over the course of an intensive artistic career. The book contextualises and reveals this material anew through comparisons with works in the Ashmolean’s historical collections, focussing on selected themes in a compact and accessible way. Professor Lang’s Slade Lectures will expand upon the exhibition and publication.

8

9

Overleaf: Fig.2 Letter published in the Partisan Review, 1961, signed by Philip Guston

Philip Guston: Locating the Image Karen Lang

Fig.3 Philip Guston, Drawing for Bombardment, 1936. Pencil on paper, 45.1 x 60.2 cm.

Private Collection

12

Throughout a long and prolific artistic career, Philip Guston captured the experience of the American twentieth century in works of art that satisfy and surprise. Like Rembrandt and Picasso, he worked with and against his natural facility in order to expand his art. The varied drawing media and techniques in which he worked were central to his artistic process.

The Ashmolean exhibition on Philip Guston includes thirtyfive works on paper spanning the artist’s career. This selection of his work allows for a deeper investigation into his development from a gifted young draughtsman of socially conscious work, such as Drawing for Bombardment (Fig.3) or Moveable Hangars for a Mobile War (Fig.5), to the varied abstractions of the 1950s and 1960s, or the emotionally powerful allegories of his maturity, such as View (Fig.6) or Coat (Fig.7). Guston’s art transformed in response to the political and social tumult of the twentieth century. His engagement with literature and the history of art deepened the exploration of self and world.

The art of the past filled Guston with inspiration. Repro­ ductions of Albrecht Dürer’s master engraving Melencolia I of 1514 (Fig.8), and Piero della Francesca’s Flagellation of Christ (Fig.9), a mid-fifteenth century oil and tempera panel painting, hung on his kitchen wall so he could look at them daily, over eggs and coffee in the morning or drinks in the evening, as he put it (Fig.10). His ‘pantheon’ of artists also included Giotto, Masaccio, Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Picasso and de Chirico. His recorded talks and published writings brim with the names of the other artists he admired.

Guston saw the works of these artists differently all the time. He responded intuitively to the feeling the work gives off.

Naturally, his perceptions changed as the world changed around 13

Philip Guston: Locating the Image Karen Lang

Fig.3 Philip Guston, Drawing for Bombardment, 1936. Pencil on paper, 45.1 x 60.2 cm.

Private Collection

12

Throughout a long and prolific artistic career, Philip Guston captured the experience of the American twentieth century in works of art that satisfy and surprise. Like Rembrandt and Picasso, he worked with and against his natural facility in order to expand his art. The varied drawing media and techniques in which he worked were central to his artistic process.

The Ashmolean exhibition on Philip Guston includes thirtyfive works on paper spanning the artist’s career. This selection of his work allows for a deeper investigation into his development from a gifted young draughtsman of socially conscious work, such as Drawing for Bombardment (Fig.3) or Moveable Hangars for a Mobile War (Fig.5), to the varied abstractions of the 1950s and 1960s, or the emotionally powerful allegories of his maturity, such as View (Fig.6) or Coat (Fig.7). Guston’s art transformed in response to the political and social tumult of the twentieth century. His engagement with literature and the history of art deepened the exploration of self and world.

The art of the past filled Guston with inspiration. Repro­ ductions of Albrecht Dürer’s master engraving Melencolia I of 1514 (Fig.8), and Piero della Francesca’s Flagellation of Christ (Fig.9), a mid-fifteenth century oil and tempera panel painting, hung on his kitchen wall so he could look at them daily, over eggs and coffee in the morning or drinks in the evening, as he put it (Fig.10). His ‘pantheon’ of artists also included Giotto, Masaccio, Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Picasso and de Chirico. His recorded talks and published writings brim with the names of the other artists he admired.

Guston saw the works of these artists differently all the time. He responded intuitively to the feeling the work gives off.

Naturally, his perceptions changed as the world changed around 13

Fig. 4 Paolo di Dono, called Uccello (1397–1475), The Hunt in the Forest, c.1465–70.

Tempera and oil, with traces of gold, on panel, 73.3 x 177 cm. Presented by William Thomas Horner Fox-Strangways, later 4th Earl of Ilchester, 1850. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, WA1850.31

Moveable Hangars for a Mobile War (opposite) is part of a series of drawings commissioned

by Fortune Magazine in support of America’s effort in the Second World War. Guston uses the pencil and crayon to great effect, creating undulating shadows along the top of the large curtain as well as crisply delineated forms, such as the steel beams and hangars.

The arrangement of the hangars in rows, and their recession into space, recalls Paolo Uccello’s use of multiple lines of perspective in The Hunt in the Forest to create the illusion of horses and animals charging, row upon row, into the depths of the forest.

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Fig.5 Philip Guston, Moveable Hangars for a Mobile War, 1943. Pencil and crayon on paper, 50.8 x 40.6 cm. Private Collection

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Fig. 4 Paolo di Dono, called Uccello (1397–1475), The Hunt in the Forest, c.1465–70.

Tempera and oil, with traces of gold, on panel, 73.3 x 177 cm. Presented by William Thomas Horner Fox-Strangways, later 4th Earl of Ilchester, 1850. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, WA1850.31

Moveable Hangars for a Mobile War (opposite) is part of a series of drawings commissioned

by Fortune Magazine in support of America’s effort in the Second World War. Guston uses the pencil and crayon to great effect, creating undulating shadows along the top of the large curtain as well as crisply delineated forms, such as the steel beams and hangars.

The arrangement of the hangars in rows, and their recession into space, recalls Paolo Uccello’s use of multiple lines of perspective in The Hunt in the Forest to create the illusion of horses and animals charging, row upon row, into the depths of the forest.

14

Fig.5 Philip Guston, Moveable Hangars for a Mobile War, 1943. Pencil and crayon on paper, 50.8 x 40.6 cm. Private Collection

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Fig.6 Philip Guston, View, 1980. Lithograph on paper, 76 x 108 cm. Tate, P11413

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Fig.7 Philip Guston, Coat (Gemini Gel series), 1980. Lithograph on paper, 60.4 x 95.9 cm. Tate, P1107

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Fig.6 Philip Guston, View, 1980. Lithograph on paper, 76 x 108 cm. Tate, P11413

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Fig.7 Philip Guston, Coat (Gemini Gel series), 1980. Lithograph on paper, 60.4 x 95.9 cm. Tate, P1107

17

Fig.26 Probably Gui Xia (active 1195 – c. 1235), Man playing a qin beneath a pine tree. Ink and slight colour on silk mount, 24.8 x 23.5 cm.

Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, EA1972.24

Fig.25 Philip Guston, Untitled, c. 1955. Ink on paper, 49.8 x 64.1 cm. Private Collection

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Piero della Francesca in Arezzo, Signorelli in Orvieto, Masaccio in Florence, Tintoretto and Tiepolo in Venice. He also went to Spain and France, where he could admire the work of El Greco, Goya and Manet. Seeing the war-torn landscape in Italy, seeing the work of the artists he admired, this and more would increase the desire to start again from scratch. Having reached an impasse in his painting, he began to draw exclusively.

In Drawing no. 2 (Ischia) (Fig.24), and in the untitled pen and ink drawings of the middle 1950s (Fig.25), the composition is drastically pared back. The artist now uses line rather than figurative form and shape, and varying densities of black ink on paper rather than conventional modelling and shading, to locate the image within a shallow surface plane.

Chinese painting, especially painting of the Song Dynasty (10th–12th centuries), was Guston’s ‘greatest ideal’ (Fig.26). He owned several books on Chinese painting, including Osvald Sirén’s translation of the texts of the Chinese painter-critics, from the Han through the Ch’ing Dynasties. In their practice of long 41

Fig.26 Probably Gui Xia (active 1195 – c. 1235), Man playing a qin beneath a pine tree. Ink and slight colour on silk mount, 24.8 x 23.5 cm.

Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, EA1972.24

Fig.25 Philip Guston, Untitled, c. 1955. Ink on paper, 49.8 x 64.1 cm. Private Collection

40

Piero della Francesca in Arezzo, Signorelli in Orvieto, Masaccio in Florence, Tintoretto and Tiepolo in Venice. He also went to Spain and France, where he could admire the work of El Greco, Goya and Manet. Seeing the war-torn landscape in Italy, seeing the work of the artists he admired, this and more would increase the desire to start again from scratch. Having reached an impasse in his painting, he began to draw exclusively.

In Drawing no. 2 (Ischia) (Fig.24), and in the untitled pen and ink drawings of the middle 1950s (Fig.25), the composition is drastically pared back. The artist now uses line rather than figurative form and shape, and varying densities of black ink on paper rather than conventional modelling and shading, to locate the image within a shallow surface plane.

Chinese painting, especially painting of the Song Dynasty (10th–12th centuries), was Guston’s ‘greatest ideal’ (Fig.26). He owned several books on Chinese painting, including Osvald Sirén’s translation of the texts of the Chinese painter-critics, from the Han through the Ch’ing Dynasties. In their practice of long 41

Fig.27 Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Saskia asleep in Bed, 1640–2.

Pen and brush in brown ink with brown wash on laid paper, 14.4 × 20.8 cm. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, WA1954.141

meditation in the presence of nature before painting a single stroke, and once started, of painting rapidly, the Song Dynasty painters achieved the artist’s ideal: to be at one with the motive rather than recording it. This is how he described it in 1969: ‘Just you, the subject, the ink, the paper, it, the object. No separation.

Completely. And what it takes to get there.’8 Guston’s pen and ink drawings of the 1950s are his attempt to get there. Whether working with short broken lines or moving rapidly in meandering swirls, each work developed its own world of feeling. Being at one with the drawing allowed the work to emerge in its own way.

As in Rembrandt’s Saskia Asleep in Bed (Fig.27) so in Guston’s Sortie (Fig.28), form emerges from line. Rembrandt develops the figure until it shades into a recognizable portrait. Guston allows his drawing to hover between abstraction and figuration. The light bulb, the object holding the memory of the closet in the family home where he drew and painted in his youth, reveals itself and the work takes on a life of its own.

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Fig.28 Philip Guston, Sortie, 1960. Ink on paper, 47 x 58 cm. Private Collection

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Fig.27 Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Saskia asleep in Bed, 1640–2.

Pen and brush in brown ink with brown wash on laid paper, 14.4 × 20.8 cm. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, WA1954.141

meditation in the presence of nature before painting a single stroke, and once started, of painting rapidly, the Song Dynasty painters achieved the artist’s ideal: to be at one with the motive rather than recording it. This is how he described it in 1969: ‘Just you, the subject, the ink, the paper, it, the object. No separation.

Completely. And what it takes to get there.’8 Guston’s pen and ink drawings of the 1950s are his attempt to get there. Whether working with short broken lines or moving rapidly in meandering swirls, each work developed its own world of feeling. Being at one with the drawing allowed the work to emerge in its own way.

As in Rembrandt’s Saskia Asleep in Bed (Fig.27) so in Guston’s Sortie (Fig.28), form emerges from line. Rembrandt develops the figure until it shades into a recognizable portrait. Guston allows his drawing to hover between abstraction and figuration. The light bulb, the object holding the memory of the closet in the family home where he drew and painted in his youth, reveals itself and the work takes on a life of its own.

42

Fig.28 Philip Guston, Sortie, 1960. Ink on paper, 47 x 58 cm. Private Collection

43

Fig.27 Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Saskia asleep in Bed, 1640–2.

Pen and brush in brown ink with brown wash on laid paper, 14.4 × 20.8 cm. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, WA1954.141

meditation in the presence of nature before painting a single stroke, and once started, of painting rapidly, the Song Dynasty painters achieved the artist’s ideal: to be at one with the motive rather than recording it. This is how he described it in 1969: ‘Just you, the subject, the ink, the paper, it, the object. No separation.

Completely. And what it takes to get there.’8 Guston’s pen and ink drawings of the 1950s are his attempt to get there. Whether working with short broken lines or moving rapidly in meandering swirls, each work developed its own world of feeling. Being at one with the drawing allowed the work to emerge in its own way.

As in Rembrandt’s Saskia Asleep in Bed (Fig.27) so in Guston’s Sortie (Fig.28), form emerges from line. Rembrandt develops the figure until it shades into a recognizable portrait. Guston allows his drawing to hover between abstraction and figuration. The light bulb, the object holding the memory of the closet in the family home where he drew and painted in his youth, reveals itself and the work takes on a life of its own.

42

Fig.28 Philip Guston, Sortie, 1960. Ink on paper, 47 x 58 cm. Private Collection

43

Fig.27 Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Saskia asleep in Bed, 1640–2.

Pen and brush in brown ink with brown wash on laid paper, 14.4 × 20.8 cm. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, WA1954.141

meditation in the presence of nature before painting a single stroke, and once started, of painting rapidly, the Song Dynasty painters achieved the artist’s ideal: to be at one with the motive rather than recording it. This is how he described it in 1969: ‘Just you, the subject, the ink, the paper, it, the object. No separation.

Completely. And what it takes to get there.’8 Guston’s pen and ink drawings of the 1950s are his attempt to get there. Whether working with short broken lines or moving rapidly in meandering swirls, each work developed its own world of feeling. Being at one with the drawing allowed the work to emerge in its own way.

As in Rembrandt’s Saskia Asleep in Bed (Fig.27) so in Guston’s Sortie (Fig.28), form emerges from line. Rembrandt develops the figure until it shades into a recognizable portrait. Guston allows his drawing to hover between abstraction and figuration. The light bulb, the object holding the memory of the closet in the family home where he drew and painted in his youth, reveals itself and the work takes on a life of its own.

42

Fig.28 Philip Guston, Sortie, 1960. Ink on paper, 47 x 58 cm. Private Collection

43

Fig.30 Philip Guston, Untitled, 1969. Acrylic on panel, 61 x 67.3 cm.

Private Collection

46

Fig.31 Philip Guston, Untitled, 1968. Brush and ink on paper, 35.6 x 43.2 cm.

Private Collection

47

Fig.30 Philip Guston, Untitled, 1969. Acrylic on panel, 61 x 67.3 cm.

Private Collection

46

Fig.31 Philip Guston, Untitled, 1968. Brush and ink on paper, 35.6 x 43.2 cm.

Private Collection

47

Fig.32 Philip Guston, Untitled, 1980. Acrylic and ink on illustration board, 50.8 x 76.2 cm.

Private Collection

48

his figurative style along with his artistic preconceptions. Now, the upheavals of the 1960s – civil rights protests, brutal state violence, race riots – compelled a move toward external reality.

Guston’s work of the late 1960s is often dubbed a ‘return to figuration’. The artist does not return to the style of his previous work, however. Instead, he brings more of the world into his work.

He does so using a vocabulary of everyday forms: lightbulbs, books, shoes and other remnants of daily life and memory. In the brush and ink drawings of 1968, the two lines which activate the entire space of the drawing sheet in Aloft (Fig.29) metamorphose into words on the pages of a book (Fig.30) or stitching lines forming the heel of a boot (Fig.31). In other drawings he made during this year, the lines become windows, eye slits in a hood, nails in wooden floor planks or upholstery buttons on an overstuffed chair. The drawings of 1968 resemble a primer of forms: in the straight-on style of old-fashioned sign painting, they present the everyday object as a fact.

For all their seeming simplicity, however, these are not the books and shoes we know. Adding to the ambiguity, it can be difficult to gauge their size and scale. They are at once monu­ mental and precious, old-fashioned and modern, prosaic and Platonic objects. Thinking back on it, Guston remarked that the everyday object – a book, a hand or a shoe – finally became to him ‘the most enigmatic of all.’11 In other words, a book, a hand or a shoe could reveal the world as if we are seeing it for the first time.

Guston knew the modern Russian writers very well. He admired how Isaac Babel could write in an unvarnished style which is nonetheless deeply felt. Referring to Babel, he said: ‘There can be nothing more startling than a simple statement of fact, in a certain form’.12 The artist’s drawings of 1968 are simple statements of fact, in that certain form.

These works are as inviting as they are perplexing. They satisfy easily but surprise nonetheless. Indeed, it is as if the artist is now moving about everywhere in time and space. Recall what he said in 1969: ‘It’s not yourself, but it’s yourself as you reflect, as you’re 49

Fig.32 Philip Guston, Untitled, 1980. Acrylic and ink on illustration board, 50.8 x 76.2 cm.

Private Collection

48

his figurative style along with his artistic preconceptions. Now, the upheavals of the 1960s – civil rights protests, brutal state violence, race riots – compelled a move toward external reality.

Guston’s work of the late 1960s is often dubbed a ‘return to figuration’. The artist does not return to the style of his previous work, however. Instead, he brings more of the world into his work.

He does so using a vocabulary of everyday forms: lightbulbs, books, shoes and other remnants of daily life and memory. In the brush and ink drawings of 1968, the two lines which activate the entire space of the drawing sheet in Aloft (Fig.29) metamorphose into words on the pages of a book (Fig.30) or stitching lines forming the heel of a boot (Fig.31). In other drawings he made during this year, the lines become windows, eye slits in a hood, nails in wooden floor planks or upholstery buttons on an overstuffed chair. The drawings of 1968 resemble a primer of forms: in the straight-on style of old-fashioned sign painting, they present the everyday object as a fact.

For all their seeming simplicity, however, these are not the books and shoes we know. Adding to the ambiguity, it can be difficult to gauge their size and scale. They are at once monu­ mental and precious, old-fashioned and modern, prosaic and Platonic objects. Thinking back on it, Guston remarked that the everyday object – a book, a hand or a shoe – finally became to him ‘the most enigmatic of all.’11 In other words, a book, a hand or a shoe could reveal the world as if we are seeing it for the first time.

Guston knew the modern Russian writers very well. He admired how Isaac Babel could write in an unvarnished style which is nonetheless deeply felt. Referring to Babel, he said: ‘There can be nothing more startling than a simple statement of fact, in a certain form’.12 The artist’s drawings of 1968 are simple statements of fact, in that certain form.

These works are as inviting as they are perplexing. They satisfy easily but surprise nonetheless. Indeed, it is as if the artist is now moving about everywhere in time and space. Recall what he said in 1969: ‘It’s not yourself, but it’s yourself as you reflect, as you’re 49

Acknowledgements

This exhibition would not have been possible without Musa Mayer, the Estate of Philip Guston, and Sally Radic and her team at the Guston Foundation. We would like to thank them cordially for their close collaboration and for lending so extensively to our show. We owe a debt of gratitude to Hauser & Wirth Gallery for generously supporting the project. We are grateful to all other institutions and private collectors who have kindly agreed to loans: Tate, London; Christian and Florence Levett; Tim Atkins; De Ying Foundation, and those who wish to remain anonymous.

Special thanks are due to the Slade Lecture Foundation for their support of this publication. Our colleagues Mark Godfrey and Hannah Johnston at Tate have facilitated a loan and we are grateful for friendly, collaborative conversations.

At the Ashmolean, credit is due to Byung Kim for the exhibition design. Aisha Burtenshaw and her team of registrars have shepherded the loans with assiduous care while the exhibition logistics were overseen by Agnes Valencak. As always, many thanks go to Dec McCarthy for the successful completion of this publication. The insightful design of the book and the careful copyediting is down to Stephen Hebron. We would like to thank the Ashmolean’s teams in Art Handling, Communication, Conservation, Design, Development, Education, Press and Marketing, Public Programme and Visitor Experience for their skilful work.

Exhibition supported by Hauser & Worth.

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