GUSTON, Philip; FRANKEL, David (ed.)
Philip Guston. Now

“Guston’s ‘hood’ paintings, with their ambiguous narratives and incendiary subject matter, are not asleep—they’re woke.”
—Glenn Ligon

This a pretty good catalogue, that was meant to accompany the retrospective that—as everyone know—never happened—or, well, has been postponed.

Philip Guston’s influence and recognition shouldn’t hide the controversies that came with the reception of his work, and that the energy that goes through his whole oeuvre is never harmless. His winding career, embrace of “high” and “low” sources, the comic and the tragic, the politic and the personal, and constant aesthetic reinvention defy easy categorization, and his 1968 figurative turn is by now one of modern art’s most legendary conversion narratives. “I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening in America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything—and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?”

Philip Guston Now includes essays by Harry Cooper, Mark Godfrey, Alison de Lima Greene, and Kate Nesin, and a definitive chronology by Cooper and Jennifer Roberts, reflecting many new discoveries. It also features the voices of artists who have been inspired by the full range of his work: Tacita Dean, Peter Fischli, Trenton Doyle Hancock, William Kentridge, Glenn Ligon, David Reed, Dana Schutz, Amy Sillman, Art Spiegelman and Rirkrit Tiravanija. 

Text by Harry Cooper, Mark Godfrey, Alison de Lima Greene, Kate Nesin. Contributions by Tacita Dean, Peter Fischli, Trenton Doyle Hancock, William Kentridge, Glenn Ligon, David Reed, Dana Schutz, Amy Sillman, Art Spiegelman, Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Published by D.A.P. / National Gallery of Art Washington, 2020
Monographs / Painting