Philip Guston: The Studio (1969)

Early in his career, Philip Guston’s paintings were abstractly generated which told a bleak story in which artists’ expression was obscure. As his career went forward, Guston began to step away from such painterly abstraction as he returned to figuration. His new works showed the presence of almost “cartoon like” subjects in which he drew from cultural issues such as the Ku Klux Klan which can be traced back to his childhood. He began to “portray himself, as in The Studio, as a cowled presence amid the doubts and difficulties of the working environment” (Archer, pg. 154-55). His return to figuration would be seen and “horrifying to some of his supporters” (Farthing, pg 440) who saw his new works as ugly. He later became known for these new images, but the rapid translation of his work shocked many in the art world. He could be one of the few artists to return from abstract expressionism to figurative painting.

Guston and a group of young artists in the 70’s (Susan Rothenberg and Jennifer Bartlett) began to incorporate figures in their styles of painting in which they “inherited from minimal” in the 60’s (Russell, pg. 456). Guston’s goal was to portray a subject in a manner in which had not been used before. His art began to look much like earlier pop art and was criticized for “selling out”. The Studio hosts a man in a white hood (a reference to the KKK) painting himself while smoking a cigarette. The environment of this painting shows the confusion of the artist and the question of his subject matter. Guston commonly uses the man in a white hood to portray social issues that are imbedded in the symbol the KKK. He also shows references to the hand of god in his art with the use of an oversized hand which might show the question of human existence.

In The Studio, Guston covers many themes which he uses by touching on the subject abstractly with symbolism. His brushwork in this piece borrows from the ideas in abstract art, and the formation of images and background also show glimpses of minimalism. Random images in the background give hidden meaning such as the light bulb, the clock, and cigarettes (which might refer to the agony of death and human mortality). I like this piece because he uses many styles together and shows them off in a silly, yet interesting fashion. I would describe his work with a blending of Lichtenstein’s pop art and Gorky’s abstract expressionism. Looking at his more recent works reminds me of reading a comic book, which also brings me back to my childhood.

Philip Guston: Mother and Child (1930)

Early in his career Guston showed heavy influence from Picasso and the Mexican Muralists (Lucie-Smith- pg. 185) as is evident in this work. At the young age of 17, Philip Guston used common household paint to create his 1^st fully developed painting named Mother and Child. I would classify Guston’s art as expressionism which he evolved his work into abstract expressionism soon after this piece. When we compare this image with his other works, such as painting no. 9, the use of figures in Mother and child allow the viewer to read see the story entailed.

This woman bathing her child represents the bond between parent and child. Such an image as this one, most of Guston’s work can be traced back to his childhood when he found his father dead after he had committed suicide (Farthing- pg. 440). The absence of the father figure in this picture shows that Philip lost touch with his father and in his absence gained a close bond with his mother. I believe that the use of dark colors in this piece tell of the shattered emotions he shelters from the loss of his father. The baby in this picture represents the dependency he developed to his mother in context of the bath and dangling from her lap.

Though I am fonder of his later works, which moved more towards pop art and looked almost “cartoon like”, I chose this work of art to represent Guston’s evolution of his artistic style. Guston constructs the figures as lifeless forms, almost statue like, much in the way that Picasso’s classical style. The environment of this piece is very open and dark which the walls are incomplete and the dark blue sky with gray clouds. Guston uses his canvas in this work to tell a tale to the viewer of a deeper message than the story of life. I believe this is not a story of a woman with her baby as much as a story about the baby being with its mother.

Philip Guston: Head and Bottle (1975)

Philip Guston’s images of symbolism could not be better defined than by his art masterpiece called Head and Bottle. The cartoon like painting uses many undertones which lavishly embellishes self defining issues of human mortality and depression from which the artist struggled with. The images in Head and Bottle show mainly Guston’s obsession with alcohol. He portrays a giant one-eyed head gazing into an empty bottle lying on a desk. The one eyed figure is a symbol of the painter’s view inside his own art. The focus in this piece is on the contents of the desk, which include a book, an empty bottle, and a paint brush. This shows an inside to the thought of Guston, and the things which mattered to him most: The Paintbrush shows his interest in the workings of his own art, the open book realizes his love for reading and poetry, and the empty bottle obviously shows his love for alcohol.

Guston “seemed to reject his own generation in favour of a younger one” (Lucie-Smith, pg. 184) when he began to return to his admiration of Mexican muralists. When I first saw this image in class, I laughed because I saw the humor in which Guston used to relay his message. His cartoon images played with my feelings of seeing his art for face value. When I began to look deeper into his meaning, I realized the dark context of his work. The empty bottle referring to depression, and the featureless face symbolizing human mortality made me question this piece which has then become my favorite of Guston’s work. I saw Guston’s revival of formation as bliss, but during the time of its revealing, many saw it as a regression in his talents.

The atmosphere of his work reminds me of Francesco Clemente’s Two Horizon as both used vivid colors and easy brushstrokes created a fantasy land. Guston also toys with the idea of assemblage in this work bringing together elements of no connection to tell a story. He used the canvas in such a way that inspired the viewer to question what they were looking at and search for deeper meanings from drawing these elements together. Through his work, Guston used the canvas to show the artist’s struggle with paint and subject matter which also comes from the large eye staring into the bottle as though it were to find the answer in the bottom of it. As Guston shows in this piece, even though the bottle is empty, the eye is still looking for an answer which shows the confusion of the artist.