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Lot Essay
One of the most influential American artists of the 20th Century, Philip Guston is known for the wide range of innovative styles that he worked in over the course of his nearly seven-decades-long artistic career. As a member of the New York School, Guston exhibited alongside Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, a relationship that is evident in the themes and approaches of his works. Untitled belongs to a brief period of total abstraction in Guston’s artistic canon, and is among a small number of paintings he produced during these years. Executed in 1957, it sat in the collection of Guy and Marie-Hélène Weill for a half-century, leaving their possession on just one confirmed occasion: for the seminal 1968-1969 traveling show organized by the American Federation of Arts.
In his catalogue essay for the Philip Guston: Retrospective exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth in 2003, curator Michael Auping writes, “Guston’s abstractions remain one of the best-kept secrets of that groundbreaking movement and one of the least understood aspects of the artist’s development” (M. Auping, Philip Guston: Retrospective, New York, 2003, p. 18). Building on his earlier abstractions, which were characterized by the dominant reds of the early 1950’s, followed by the darker, melancholic greys of his 1960’s, Untitled represents a moment when the artist began to introduce new hues, such as the vibrant purples and pinks which can be seen here. The painting is a work of total abstraction; its vertical stripes of color veer sharply back and forth with bold movements of the artist’s hand. In a few areas, dabs of paint are left raised on the surface, such as the broad red mark near the center. In other places, Guston’s dry brush leaves slight, textured traces of pigment. Further exploring subtle color variations, Guston employs a range of blacks, using the true dark shade and tinting others muted with a touch of white. A few shapes emerge from the frenzy of bright colors, formed by clustered, overlapping strokes. Unlike The Clock (1956/7) and Mirror (1957), no title designates to the viewer what object the strokes represent. Traces of the support are exposed towards the upper edges of the painting, and atmospheric blues and lavenders streak upwards, emphasizing motion with an uninhibited charge.
As Guston’s style developed independently from his contemporaries, he became increasingly concerned with the psychological influences behind the abstract movement. In a letter, Guston wrote, “Ah, so that’s what ‘art’ is – lets you stop – isolate it – lets us ‘see’ it – but here in this new picture there is ‘nothing’ to see – except multitudes of masses, that go on forever – in the mind” (P. Guston, quoted by R. Feld, Remembering Philip Guston, New York, 2003, p.9). Moving away from the darker experiences of his childhood, the bright palette of Untitled and the subtle color variations in single brushstrokes capture the spontaneity of a moment. Interested in the ability of a single image to capture an emotion or thought, abstraction allowed Guston to experiment with a hazy atmosphere, depicting the way the human mind contorts an image into something unidentifiable. It is easy to see how Modern literature, such as T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Wasteland, influenced the way that Guston approached the distortion of experience and memory in his works, which closely resemble a stream-of-conscious narrative in this abstract period. Here, the most eye-catching shapes are concentrated at the center of the pictorial frame, at the same time receding and jumping forward in a mingling of planes. The way that Guston weaves his brushstrokes together emphasizes the connectivity of each colored silhouette, establishing the painting as a single unit rather than individual segments.
In his catalogue essay for the Philip Guston: Retrospective exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth in 2003, curator Michael Auping writes, “Guston’s abstractions remain one of the best-kept secrets of that groundbreaking movement and one of the least understood aspects of the artist’s development” (M. Auping, Philip Guston: Retrospective, New York, 2003, p. 18). Building on his earlier abstractions, which were characterized by the dominant reds of the early 1950’s, followed by the darker, melancholic greys of his 1960’s, Untitled represents a moment when the artist began to introduce new hues, such as the vibrant purples and pinks which can be seen here. The painting is a work of total abstraction; its vertical stripes of color veer sharply back and forth with bold movements of the artist’s hand. In a few areas, dabs of paint are left raised on the surface, such as the broad red mark near the center. In other places, Guston’s dry brush leaves slight, textured traces of pigment. Further exploring subtle color variations, Guston employs a range of blacks, using the true dark shade and tinting others muted with a touch of white. A few shapes emerge from the frenzy of bright colors, formed by clustered, overlapping strokes. Unlike The Clock (1956/7) and Mirror (1957), no title designates to the viewer what object the strokes represent. Traces of the support are exposed towards the upper edges of the painting, and atmospheric blues and lavenders streak upwards, emphasizing motion with an uninhibited charge.
As Guston’s style developed independently from his contemporaries, he became increasingly concerned with the psychological influences behind the abstract movement. In a letter, Guston wrote, “Ah, so that’s what ‘art’ is – lets you stop – isolate it – lets us ‘see’ it – but here in this new picture there is ‘nothing’ to see – except multitudes of masses, that go on forever – in the mind” (P. Guston, quoted by R. Feld, Remembering Philip Guston, New York, 2003, p.9). Moving away from the darker experiences of his childhood, the bright palette of Untitled and the subtle color variations in single brushstrokes capture the spontaneity of a moment. Interested in the ability of a single image to capture an emotion or thought, abstraction allowed Guston to experiment with a hazy atmosphere, depicting the way the human mind contorts an image into something unidentifiable. It is easy to see how Modern literature, such as T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Wasteland, influenced the way that Guston approached the distortion of experience and memory in his works, which closely resemble a stream-of-conscious narrative in this abstract period. Here, the most eye-catching shapes are concentrated at the center of the pictorial frame, at the same time receding and jumping forward in a mingling of planes. The way that Guston weaves his brushstrokes together emphasizes the connectivity of each colored silhouette, establishing the painting as a single unit rather than individual segments.