I Paint What I Want to See: Philip Guston (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Remember that when Guston had his first 'stumble-bum' exhibition there was lots of exciting figurative painting and image-making happening. Whereas the UCal book was a labor of love, some years in the making—the cassette and reel-to-reel recordings were transcribed, and the book edited, by Guston’s close friend, the poet Clark Coolidge—one suspects that I Paint was whipped up in a matter of minutes. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

Whether the Guston myth (that he was quite so singular and in opposition to the art of his times) is entirely true, he definitely seems super-relevant to today. Philip Guston (June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980) was a painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Abstract at times, there were moments when I had no idea what he was on about, but others where he was irresistibly captivating. If his paintings are always saying ‘Yes, but…’ (to quote the title of Dore Ashton’s essential 1976 book about the artist), so too is Guston.It felt weird hearing him describe the speed he could churn them out although that’s also part of why I chose it for the project, lol. No criptic arty language but relatable and approachable writing about making a painting, this proves to me that's mostly art critics that makes art a difficult subject, for artist it all more simple. His declaration that ‘I think of my pictures as a kind of figuration’ is borne out in the works he was making at the time, many of which have matter-of-fact titles ( Table, Vessel, Branch, all 1960) that are worlds away from the highfalutin sublimity of those of his New York School peers. Figurative painting allowed him to do in art what he’d always loved about talking: to lurch from subject to subject, to butt up against contradictions, to make wisecracks, to repeat himself.

The latest edition of the Yogyakarta biennial explores ‘Titen’, a Javanese word for the art (or science? Got about halfway before losing interest due to it feeling repetitive caused by it being a collection of his interviews and talks. I am not crazy about Philip Guston's work (Philip Guston says that of Ronald Kitaj's work on page 211, Kitaj, whose work I am crazy about), I am not crazy about Guston's work, I mean, who am I to say this, but it is just that I find it crude (to use the words of Harold Rosenberg in this very book), and I generally struggle to connect with his paintings. Faith, Hope, and Impossibility and On Morton Feldman are two essays I think every artist should read.Ofcourse, with Guston you're better off getting the Collected Writings, but I love these little white penguin classics. So here we are, I am not the biggest fan of his work but there is something about artists, people who produce art, breath art, live art, and of course always think about art, that makes their discussions, thoughts and writings about art, absolutely fascinating. What I appreciate most, re-reading this stuff, is how he manages to hold that existential, post-war bleakness without becoming too heroic and romantic.