Philip Guston: Works on Paper at The Morgan Library on artrepublic.com
Exhibition running from May 02 2008
until Aug 31 2008
The extraordinary drawings of Philip Guston (1913–1980) are the subject of this major exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum. Together with Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Guston is recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century. The exhibition marks the first retrospective of his drawings in twenty years and the Morgan is the only American venue. Organized by the KunstMuseum Bonn, and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich, in cooperation with the artist’s estate, Philip Guston: Works on Paper examines the importance of drawing throughout key periods of Guston’s career, from the mid-1940s to 1980. While the artist is primarily known for his paintings, his drawings occupy a special place in his oeuvre as they influenced new phases of creativity and served to articulate radically different approaches. The Morgan Library & Museum’s presentation of the exhibition features more than one-hundred drawings, including many rarely seen works that were left in the artist’s studio after his death as well as major loans from museums and private collections. Guston was a prolific draftsman who often turned to drawing to explore new directions in his art before applying them to painting. Several times during the course of his career he stopped painting altogether to concentrate on drawing. Such phases mark the dramatic changes that characterized Guston’s art from figuration to abstraction and vice versa. In the 1950s, when Guston was a central figure of the abstract expressionist movement, he developed a form of abstract, linear drawings characterized by a great concern with structure and balance, in contrast with the more spontaneous gesture typical of the New York school. A prime example of his style during this period is Drawing Related to Zone (Drawing No. 19; 1954) which derives its wonderful rhythm from its balanced composition as well as from variations in the thickness and pressure of the ink strokes. For a two-year period, from 1966 to 1968, Guston stopped painting and produced only drawings of startling economy. Even in his most abstract drawings, however, he did not exclude references to the real world. Simple forms evoke primitive renderings of common objects, as in Untitled (1967), where an oval shape can be read as a stone or a head. It was through the hundreds of drawings created during this period that Guston would find inspiration to move away from abstraction and embrace a figurative, almost cartoonlike imagery that would typify his work during the last decade of his life. From the mid-1970s on, autobiographical references became more frequent in Guston’s drawings which included images of himself and his wife, Musa, often in situations reflecting the artist’s anxieties. In Web (1975), for instance, the two figures, half-hidden under a pile of shoes, are caught in a spider web. Guston’s late drawings combine allegorical imagery, dominated by body fragments and accumulations of detritus, with more direct evocations of simple objects from his surroundings, as in Untitled (Cherries, 1980). OPENING HOURS: Tue - Thur: 10.30 17.00, Fri: 10.30 - 21.00, Sat: 10.00 - 18.00, Sun: 11.00 - 18.00 Image Credits: Image 1: Philip Guston, Untitled (Cherries), 1980Ink and acrylic on board, 50.8 x 76.2 cm (20 x 30 in), Private Collection, © Estate of Philip Guston Image 2: Philip Guston, Untitled (Book), 1968, Gouache on paper board, 51 x 76 cm (20 x 30 in), © Estate of Philip Guston, Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York, Photo Credit Richard P. Goodbody Inc., New York Image 3: Philip Guston, Untitled, 1980, Ink on paper, 47.6 x 66.7 cm (18 3/4 x 26 1/4 in), Private Collection, © Estate of Philip Guston, Courtesy McKee Gallery, New YorkPhoto Credit: Richard P. Goodbody Inc., New York  |
