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Artists come in and out of my life, though you can walk through any American gallery in the United States and see a Philip Guston painting. They are always there hung next to a Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, or Mark Rothko. And as you many of you know already, I would always choose Mitchell. I will continue to choose Joan because she is by far the better painter. Guston's work is almost instantly recognizable with the pink and cadium red that he had a deep obsession with, as “the mess of pink makes him want to paint." Don’t we always want to know what drives a painter to paint? And this exhibit, Philip Guston NOW at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has been under much scrutiny and almost didn’t happen because of Guston’s comic-like symbols of KKK members and other self-referential interrogations of race, power, and politics. After much reflection, I think this palette saved his life having found his father's body after he hung himself in Phillip's childhood home. It seems that his early trauma deeply formed his relationship to painting. I paired the Guston's exhibit with a required walk along the National Mall and my first visit to the National Museum of African American Culture and History. Here, in one afternoon, I was faced with the limitations of museums. I was faced with symbols of white supremacy, murder, my own white privilege, and a profound sadness around the current state of our country. As an eternal optimist and firm believer that art can transform us, objects have limitations. A white painter lauded in the American art market facing his white guilt is insufficient. Not that this art or the historical objects do not hold meaning in themselves, I think they do. Exhibits do not bring black lives back from the dead. I am confronting the finite ability of a museum to transform our biases and our own perceptions. The work is much deeper and much harder than viewing challenging artwork. Ultimately, it is about choosing to change oneself from within.I have never really liked Philip Guston's work. I remember facing my first Guston canvas in high school at the Saint Louis Art Museum (and in later years the Kemper Museum at Washington University in Saint Louis where he briefly taught). I never liked his palette. It did not inspire me. It lacked depth and inspiration. I hated the pink. Keith Haring's commentary on the use of the color red always came to mind, "Red is one of the strongest colors, it's blood, it has a power with the eye." I thought if an artist used red, it should be intentional and focused. Guston used this pastel palette unsparingly, shifting from deep reds, to softs red, to pure cotton candy pink. It was deeply unappealing. The colors made me uneasy making me reach for Pepto Bismol to calm his paintings down (or maybe my own stomach). It is for this very reason that I was attracted to see this retrospective of his work. I wanted to prove my assumptions wrong. I knew there was something I was not connecting. I often know I have gravely misjudged an artist based on singular experiences of one or two objects. Wide ranging exhibitions help me course correct my own mischaracterizations of artists.
One painting in this exhibition changed my mind about Guston's painting technique, abstraction, and command on the canvas. It stopped me in the gallery like a stop sign. I slowly rolled in closer to the canvas. As I read the chat panel, Mirror - To S.K., I slowly had a peace wash over me about my resentment towards Guston. His effort on the canvas won me over in a moment. This painting more than others I felt was actually honest. Maybe I liked it because it was a darker palette. Here Philip is facing himself by painting his reflection. “S.K” is the 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. “To see oneself in a mirror one must recognize oneself” as Kirkegaard was quoted on the chat panel. I saw myself in the painting.
I came to Kierkegaard’s writing right after I came out of the closet when I was 21 and living in El Salvador. I was facing my demons, my lies, surrounded by abject poverty and on-going trauma from a ruthless Civil War, and overall wrestling what it meant to hold American white privilege in a global society. I had similar feelings of Guston's struggle of purpose; is being a writer enough? American society ensures that artists are not valued and to be avoided. And this made me think of Kierkegaard once again of text I read right before I came out (among other lies I was telling myself and keeping hidden in my bones).
“Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself;... In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.” Søren Kierkegaard
To face ourselves in the mirror - and still, to love. This might be a radical thought and certainly not an typical art historical read of these paintings. But, after viewing all of this work together. I think Guston, through all his trauma and loss, was desperately seeking how he might possibly bring more love into the world. How might he reconcile his whiteness with the violence being brought against Black Americans? Guston through his command of his brush, the palette, and obsession, he forces us to face the uneasy, possibly uncovering a sliver of the truth. Paintings cannot legislate or create policy. They do not bring people back from the dead. This entire exhibit almost faced the fate of censorship. The controversy over this exhibit was motivating to me, too. I had to see these paintings that have stirred deep criticism of our American society. Guston was facing his own limitations of the brush. I think his paintings are admirable even with my own disdain of the primary palette. We must do what we can, we must push ourselves to find out what those limits of our being. Without it, we cannot love. And without that love, I agree with Kierkegaard, we become the "most unhappy of them all."
Installation Shots
Artists come in and out of my life, though you can walk through any American gallery in the United States and see a Philip Guston painting. They are always there hung next to a Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, or Mark Rothko. And as you many of you know already, I would always choose Mitchell. I will continue to choose Joan because she is by far the better painter. Guston's work is almost instantly recognizable with the pink and cadium red that he had a deep obsession with, as “the mess of pink makes him want to paint." Don’t we always want to know what drives a painter to paint? And this exhibit, Philip Guston NOW at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has been under much scrutiny and almost didn’t happen because of Guston’s comic-like symbols of KKK members and other self-referential interrogations of race, power, and politics. After much reflection, I think this palette saved his life having found his father's body after he hung himself in Phillip's childhood home. It seems that his early trauma deeply formed his relationship to painting. I paired the Guston's exhibit with a required walk along the National Mall and my first visit to the National Museum of African American Culture and History. Here, in one afternoon, I was faced with the limitations of museums. I was faced with symbols of white supremacy, murder, my own white privilege, and a profound sadness around the current state of our country. As an eternal optimist and firm believer that art can transform us, objects have limitations. A white painter lauded in the American art market facing his white guilt is insufficient. Not that this art or the historical objects do not hold meaning in themselves, I think they do. Exhibits do not bring black lives back from the dead. I am confronting the finite ability of a museum to transform our biases and our own perceptions. The work is much deeper and much harder than viewing challenging artwork. Ultimately, it is about choosing to change oneself from within.I have never really liked Philip Guston's work. I remember facing my first Guston canvas in high school at the Saint Louis Art Museum (and in later years the Kemper Museum at Washington University in Saint Louis where he briefly taught). I never liked his palette. It did not inspire me. It lacked depth and inspiration. I hated the pink. Keith Haring's commentary on the use of the color red always came to mind, "Red is one of the strongest colors, it's blood, it has a power with the eye." I thought if an artist used red, it should be intentional and focused. Guston used this pastel palette unsparingly, shifting from deep reds, to softs red, to pure cotton candy pink. It was deeply unappealing. The colors made me uneasy making me reach for Pepto Bismol to calm his paintings down (or maybe my own stomach). It is for this very reason that I was attracted to see this retrospective of his work. I wanted to prove my assumptions wrong. I knew there was something I was not connecting. I often know I have gravely misjudged an artist based on singular experiences of one or two objects. Wide ranging exhibitions help me course correct my own mischaracterizations of artists.
One painting in this exhibition changed my mind about Guston's painting technique, abstraction, and command on the canvas. It stopped me in the gallery like a stop sign. I slowly rolled in closer to the canvas. As I read the chat panel, Mirror - To S.K., I slowly had a peace wash over me about my resentment towards Guston. His effort on the canvas won me over in a moment. This painting more than others I felt was actually honest. Maybe I liked it because it was a darker palette. Here Philip is facing himself by painting his reflection. “S.K” is the 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. “To see oneself in a mirror one must recognize oneself” as Kirkegaard was quoted on the chat panel. I saw myself in the painting.
I came to Kierkegaard’s writing right after I came out of the closet when I was 21 and living in El Salvador. I was facing my demons, my lies, surrounded by abject poverty and on-going trauma from a ruthless Civil War, and overall wrestling what it meant to hold American white privilege in a global society. I had similar feelings of Guston's struggle of purpose; is being a writer enough? American society ensures that artists are not valued and to be avoided. And this made me think of Kierkegaard once again of text I read right before I came out (among other lies I was telling myself and keeping hidden in my bones).
“Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself;... In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.” Søren Kierkegaard
To face ourselves in the mirror - and still, to love. This might be a radical thought and certainly not an typical art historical read of these paintings. But, after viewing all of this work together. I think Guston, through all his trauma and loss, was desperately seeking how he might possibly bring more love into the world. How might he reconcile his whiteness with the violence being brought against Black Americans? Guston through his command of his brush, the palette, and obsession, he forces us to face the uneasy, possibly uncovering a sliver of the truth. Paintings cannot legislate or create policy. They do not bring people back from the dead. This entire exhibit almost faced the fate of censorship. The controversy over this exhibit was motivating to me, too. I had to see these paintings that have stirred deep criticism of our American society. Guston was facing his own limitations of the brush. I think his paintings are admirable even with my own disdain of the primary palette. We must do what we can, we must push ourselves to find out what those limits of our being. Without it, we cannot love. And without that love, I agree with Kierkegaard, we become the "most unhappy of them all."
Installation Shots