Phillip Guston

Phillip Guston on Drawing

I have been reading the new biography of Guston by Ross Feld " Guston in Time". At first the pun ( just in time ) sort of bugged me, but as I read it, I realized that the pun was an apt one. Feld uses Guston's letters and his own narration to emphasise Guston's desire to represent time by using space (pictorialism) to look inward, rather than seeing signs and gestures as proof of sincere inwardness, lke the French structurealists, and deconstructualists. I am not saying it very well so I will quote a bit of the book:

Catherine Pickstock is quoted: " ...Because the individual is all there is, and so paradoxically the individual is the universal; to the extent that there is nothing 'beyond' the individual."

" For Guston, however, there was plenty beyond ("...then you move into the next," he writes, " like a strange and new clock, warping time into becoming a frightening new other place, a land in which there is no rock and no 'nothing') -- and in calling forth his strange, funky imagery in order to "re-present" them, he insisted on seeing those things ( and himself) change." ( p. 76, "Guston in time" by Ross Feld)

As usual the Archive has a great mini biography -- scroll to the bottom for image links.