Featured Artist: Philip Guston

So I was celebrating that I had the official 8 artists in when I realized I never put in the missing two from last time. I'm utterly and completely out of descriptive creativity, thus these won't be nearly as detailed as my other entries. Will be "borrowing" a lot of info too. I'm sorry! :(

Philip Guston began his career painting scenes of social issues before becoming well known for his work in Abstract Expressionism, which often depicted blocks, masses of gestural strokes, and marks of color. During the 1960-70s, Guston returned to representational painting, though this time his characters were stylized, abstracted, cartoonish.


To BWT, Oil on canvas, 1952

“The upheavals of 1960s made Guston increasingly uncomfortable with abstract painting, and his work eventually developed into the highly original cartoon-styled realism for which he is now best known. This took him back to his early years - to the style of the comics he loved as a boy, and to the imagery of Klansmen that he first explored in the 1930s.”


Bad Habits, Oil on canvas, 1970

“These images are [often] populated by enigmatic hooded figures, reminiscent of members of the Klu Klux Klan; they are not meant to directly reference racism but rather to take a stand against war, injustice, and the hypocrisy Guston witnessed in American politics. During the years before his death in 1980, Guston continued to hone this imagery, creating increasingly enigmatic compositions reminiscent of still lives or spare landscapes, with clusters of figures, heavy boots and tools, and cycloptic heads” (http://www.theartstory.org/artist-guston-philip.htm)


Edge of Town, Oil on canvas, 1969


Head and Bottle, 1975


The Studio, Oil on canvas, 1969