First published in April, 2022
Written by Mary Dinaburg and Barbara A. MacAdam
Philip Guston, Painting, Smoking, Eating, 1973
Amid the many articles, letters to the editor, and conversations on- and off-line regarding the decision to postpone the Philip Guston exhibition, we seem to have fallen into a perilous trap—talking to and about ourselves and the Art world to the exclusion of the art and artists in question. While we address the failure of our institutions and culture at large, we risk losing sight of the meaning of the art.
In the case of the Guston cancelations, we have been naively vetting the artist through the lens of his racial identity rather than through his art. One would think that this is a time in our conflicted world to excavate truth and facts and allow for an examination of what we consider the profound humanity of Guston’s art. Surely, the fact that he was white and Jewish and saw his father commit suicide contribute to the poignancy of his work. He assumed responsibility for being a vulnerable, even misguided, human being.
Have we become victims of our own blindness, concealed beneath the hoods of righteous indignation, masking our appearance, our anxieties, our fears, and our human prejudices, weaknesses, and inadequacies.
The works at the core of this controversy are Guston’s Klu Klux Klan images, which are too often assessed for their literal content rather than their powerful metaphorical implications. The hooded figures are Guston himself; they are us; they are Everyman; they are Samuel Becket’s Godot-unknowable and unfathomable. At the same time, they are evidence of Guston’s daring. He deviated from expectations, turning away from fashionable abstraction and making an important contribution to American painting. He produced figurative often-ugly satirical work whose subject is humanity, not beauty or decoration. Guston lays it all bare, unembarrassedly exploring fundamental aspects of human nature in images of shame, gloating, and self-hatred.
Artists have held themselves outside of society to speak about the time at hand--to remind the world at a given point of who we are, what we are, how we live, and, not least, what it is to be human. Historically, art has always served to comment on and interpret the world, culture and the nature of human aspirations, from eliciting the spirits of animals in cave paintings to narrating religious stories in the great cathedrals, and using the discoveries of science, such as Michel Eugène Chevreul, Ogden Rood, and David Sutter’s theories of color and their optical effects, which led to Impressionism. Guston does all of that.
Are we now in a place that disqualifies such artistic achievements because we look first not at what the work seeks to express but at the race of the artist who made it--the color of his/her skin. Clearly, at this moment, we need the art itself more than we need a discussion of institutional justifications.
Could we not now, simply look at the art of Philip Guston and let it and us reflect on how it is to be human? Marvel in the ability of the artist to take himself—this Everyman--as his subject, vulnerable, afflicted with fear and shame. He shows human truths. He also paved the way for generations of younger artists to use figuration as a methodology rather than a subject in itself.
So, instead of attacking the institutions for whatever their excuses might be for cancelling this important exhibition, let’s turn our attention to letting the art speak for itself. Luckily, it is easy to see Guston’s work today in museums collections and galleries, as well as online and in books.