Painting On The Border: Philip Guston 1957-1967

The new show Philip Guston: Painter 1957-1967, held at Hauser & Wirth in NYC, parallels the painter’s important retrospective held in 1966 at the Jewish Museum.

Philip Guston
Leaf
1967
Charcoal on paper
45.7 x 58.4 cm / 18 x 23 in
Private Collection

A half century later the current show surveys work made on the cusp of and during the institutional retrospective. In exploring this border line period of work the current show draws attention to a series of works that have not yet been integrated into the artist’s historical-canonized legacy. Guston’s work of this period is particularly interesting. This is not  so simply because it was a part of the abstract art movement that occurred in the mid-1950s but because in subliminal ways it defied it and the dogma of modernist art, which called for self-reflexive purity.

Philip Guston
Actor
1958
Gouache on paper
59.1 x 74.3 cm / 23 1/4 x 29 1/4 in
Private Collection
Photo: Genevieve Hanson

Instead of making paintings that were only and always about paint and color, Guston questioned image making and what it means to paint abstractly.  Moreover, rather than entirely rejecting the world outside of the canvas, which was a demand of modernism, the painter attempted to reconcile abstraction and form.

Philip Guston Painter, 1957 – 1967 runs through July 29th, 2016 at Hauser & Wirth New York, 511 W 18th Street

Philip Guston in his studio, New York, 1957
Photo: Arthur Swoger

All images:
© The Estate of Philip Guston
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth