‘Uncertain times and gelatinous lines’ — review of Philip Guston’s What Endures

Both, 1976, Oil on canvas, 198.1 x 294.6 cm / 78 x 116 in

While a major retrospective ‘Phillip Guston Now’ will debut at Tate Modern in February 2021, for now we have Hauser & Wirth’s online exhibition ‘Philip Guston. What Endures’, which comprises 13 paintings selected by the artist’s daughter, Musa Mayer. Having previously curated an exhibition and written a book both titled ‘Resilience: Philip Guston in 1971’, Mayer returns to the period spanning 1971 and 1976, where, following Guston’s scathing 1970 reviews, the artist forged ahead. Moreover, this period was a tumultuous time in US history, with Watergate brewing and the Vietnam war painfully dragging on. The parallels to our own time of social upheaval — and our resilience — have informed Mayer’s selection.

Abstract Expressionism brought Philip Guston fame, but his rejection of the New York School was what made him infamous. Now he is an artist best remembered for his cartoonish paintings of Ku Klux Klansmen smoking cigars, for bean-like cyclopses staring at empty glass bottles and bare lightbulbs, and for his pink-eye palette.

In 1970, when Guston unveiled his new figurative paintings at Marlborough, his work was widely criticised. Not only was he committing blasphemy against the cult of abstraction, these large-scale paintings were crude, comic-book-like, and brash — perhaps better suited to the alleyway behind the gallery than on the white walls of the interior.

Untitled, 1971, Oil on paper mounted on panel, 74.3 x 101.6 cm / 29 1/4 x 40 in, Photo: Thomas Barratt

On the 26 June 2020, The Guston Foundation website launched, and a cursory glance through its catalogue raisonné (a potential game-changer for how we view artists’ archives) reveals that Guston’s move towards the figurative was not a new direction, but a return — or a synthesis.

 In the 1930s, Guston executed large-scale public murals influenced by Mexican muralists, such as José Clemente Orozco. Here, you can see Giorgio de Cherico-like, absurdist assemblages of everyday objects out-of-place and -time and even the same iconography (lightbulbs, pointy hoods) which would return like a rash in Guston’s late work.

Guston’s work brims with catastrophe: narrowly avoided, or immanent…

Guston’s daughter Musa Mayer writes of her selection for Hauser & Wirth’s online exhibition ‘What Endures’: ‘In [these] uncertain times, in the midst of overwhelming circumstances, it is love that endures.’ Still, the idea that the paintings shown here might be hopeful is, at first, a baffling proposition. Guston’s work brims with catastrophe: narrowly avoided, or immanent. His visual wit, his brevity and gelatinous lines protest too much; lively cartoonishness and absurd humour are clutched at as if in desperation, to stave off despair.

Take the ‘Untitled’ work from 1971. Against a background the colour of a nicotine-stained wall, a chubby three-fingered hand reaches for a brick. Why? To throw it at someone? It depends on how cynical you’re feeling. Perhaps, on the contrary, the hand reaches for what will become the cornerstone of a new building project.

Lower Level, 1975, Oil on canvas, 188 x 250.2 cm / 74 x 98 1/2 in, Photo: Genevieve Hanson

Certainly, that’s what happened when Guston switched tact in the 70s: freeing himself from the risk of solipsism that abstract expressionism presents, he reached for what was right in front of him, and often depicted the smallest units of domesticity: bricks, bottles, books. Simple, blocky things you’d put in your pockets if you wished to drown.

Is drowning the fate suffered by Guston and his wife Musa in ‘Afloat’ (1974)? Are Guston’s eyes closed peacefully or in acquiescence? Why, when Guston returns to the themes in ‘Afloat’ (1975) the following year have the couple become cyclopses, and the sea a duvet cover, with feet sticking out the end of the bed? 

…you could ask the following question of many of Guston’s paintings: dreadful red tide, or harmless bedclothes?

In fact, you could ask the following question of many of Guston’s paintings: dreadful red tide, or harmless bedclothes? Or perhaps, simply horizontal lines as sediment, a way to divide the canvas and push on. It’s difficult to decide whether we are floating on impressionist pink ripples or sinking under the jellified weight of things; rather, repetition shores us against ruin.

Ruins are not always wastelands in Guston, but also the site of inspiration. ‘Relic’ (1974) might look like a disembodied foot floating in a wasteland; yet, it is also a relic, precisely because Guston has made it so, the object survives its time. Or, put it another way, all objects — from empty bottles to bricks to ticking clocks — are relics, because they help us survive our time.

Four Heads, 1975, Oil on canvas, 170.2 x 290.8 cm / 67 x 114 1/2 in

The online exhibition ends with ‘Both’ (1976), which again shows the artist’s wife, Musa, or rather her neatly parted hair, the top of her head peeking above a horizon line. This time, though, the storm has cleared, the sea is blue and calm. The figure on the left is Musa as a young woman, upturned eyes to the peaceful sky. The figure on the right is Musa as an old woman, with grey hair and wrinkled brow.

‘What Endures’? Well, undoubtedly, love and appreciation between artist and wife. But what also endures is uncertainty. Everything has a lumpy clay-like form in Guston’s late work. The way he depicts heads remind me of plasticine, or at least subjects that require further moulding in the mind of the viewer. Faces are hidden — either by hoods, rising tides or duvet covers. 

But while we cannot read these faces, and while we might not be able to pinpoint whether we are witnessing ruination or renaissance, Guston’s work is an experience in uncertainty: one which, for all its tragicomedy and foreboding stillness, teaches us to live with the unknown.

As we look, we provide a shape, we invent. How do we do that? By starting from where we are. And with what’s right in front of us.