Guston in Time

In this warm and vibrant work of memoir and criticism, a young writer forges a friendship with Phillip Guston, one of the most influential and controversial painters of the twentieth century and the subject of a much-discussed retrospective upcoming in several major museums.

The late paintings of Philip Guston have, had a profound influence on painters today; only the altogether different work of Andy Warhol can be, said to have had a comparable impact. As time has passed and Guston's star has risen, it has, been forgotten how scandalous and crude these paintings, with their cartoonish imagery and curiously faltering application of paint, were initially deemed to be. The 1970 show at the Marlborough Gallery, in which Guston, abandoning the delicate abstract expressionist style, for which he was known, revealed his new style was critically, savaged and even led to a rift between Guston and his best friend, the composer Morton Feldman, that was never fully mended. In the aftermath of this drubbing, Guston retreated to his studio in Woodstock, New York, in part to nurse his wounds, but more importantly, to go on painting exactly as he saw fit.