^
Born on 27 June 1913: Philip
Goldstein “Guston”, in Montreal, Canada,
US Abtract
Expressionist painter who died on 07 June 1980.
— He moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1919. He began to paint
and draw in 1927 and attended the Otis Art Institute for three months (1930).
At this stage he based his technique on a close study of the art of Giorgio
de Chirico and painters of the Italian Renaissance such as Paolo Uccello,
Andrea Mantegna and Piero della Francesca. He was attempting to integrate
the modelled architectural space of Renaissance art with the contracted,
reassembled space of Cubism, for example in paintings of sinister hooded
figures reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan such as Conspirators (1930).
— Born in Montreal but grew up in Los Angeles. Studied briefly at
the Otis Art Institute in 1930, but otherwise self-taught as a painter.
His early work was influenced by Renaissance masters such as Uccello, but
combined their type of figure composition with a compressed treatment of
space derived from Cubism and de Chirico. Worked 1934-42 almost exclusively
as a mural painter on the WPA Federal Art Project and other public works
projects in Los Angeles and New York. Turned to easel painting after moving
to Iowa City in 1941 and had his first one-man exhibition at the State University
of Iowa 1944. Awarded First Prize at the 1945 Pittsburgh International.
Began to develop an abstract style in 1947, then settled in New York in
1950 and joined the circle of the Abstract Expressionists. Turned in the
late 1960s to a form of figuration with schematic images of an enigmatic
Surrealistic kind. Moved in 1967 to Woodstock, New York. Died at Woodstock.
— Ron Davis and Pat Steir were students of “Guston”.
— LINKS
— Pit
(526x849pix, 84kb — ZOOM
to 1052x1698pix, 146kb)
— City Limits
(591x792pix, 64kb — ZOOM
to 1182x1584pix, 112kb)
— Green Rug
(848x606pix, 75kb — ZOOM
to 1272x909pix, 84kb)
— Head
(673x734pix, 52kb — ZOOM
to 1346x1468pix, 98kb)
— Paint, Smoke, Eat
(612x816pix, 68kb — ZOOM
to 1224x1632pix, 122kb)
— Roma
(1971; 800x1134pix, 46kb) _ compare Notsug's Amor
di Ettone (2001; 800x1134pix, 48kb)
— The Street
(554x896pix, 52kb)
— The
Return (1958, 178x199cm; 460x512pix, 30kb) _ Before the Second World
War Guston painted figurative works with a specific social content. Then,
in 1951, he made his first truly abstract paintings. By the middle of the
decade, in paintings such as this one, Guston had begun to paint block-like
forms in strong colors, grouped at the center of the image. He thought of
the shapes in this painting as being equivalent to figures who had been
away for some time and were now returning.
— Bad
habits (1970, 185x198cm; 561x600pix, 112kb) _ After the delicate painterly
abstraction that had characterized Guston's art since the early 1950s and
made him a well-known member of Abstract Expressionism, the raw figurative
paintings of 1970 came as a shock not altogether welcomed by art critics.
Guston said later about the generally hostile reaction: “I was excommunicated
for a while”
In retrospect, the affinities between the
late figurative paintings and his previous work are as apparent as their
novelty; the inflected, creamy paint surface of his abstract paintings remains
undiminished and his images re-invoke themes from his figurative paintings
of the 1930s and 1940s. The hooded figures that appear in Bad habits
recall his paintings of the Ku Klux Klan of the early 1930s, as does the
image of flagellation.
In a lecture in March 1978 Guston spoke of
his relationship between his recent and earlier work in a way that is illuminating
of Bad habits:
“As a young boy I was an activist in
radical politics, and although I am no longer an activist, I keep track
of everything. In 1967-1968 I became very disturbed by the war [Vietnam]
and the demonstrations. They became my subject matter and I was flooded
by a memory. When I was about 17 or 18, I had done a whole series of paintings
about the Ku Klux Klan, which was very powerful in Los Angeles at that time
… In the new series of 'hoods' my attempt was really not to illustrate,
to do pictures of the KKK, as I had done earlier. The idea of evil fascinated
me, and rather like Isaac Babel who had joined the Cossacks, lived with
them and written stories about them, I almost tried to imagine that I was
living with the Klan. What would it be like to be evil? To plan and plot.
Then I started conceiving an imaginary city being overtaken by the Klan.
I was like a movie director. I couldn't wait, I had hundreds of pictures
in mind and when I left the studio I would make notes to myself, memos,
'Put them all around the table, eating, drinking beer'. Ideas and feelings
kept coming so fast; I couldn't stop, I was sitting on the crest of a wave.” |
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