Anodyne
Friday, May 02, 2008
 

Thoughtful NYT review of a new Guston drawing show at the Morgan Library:

"[Guston] told stories of Sisyphean ennui. The beat-up, bandaged head with the big sad eye gazing uphill; the boards with nails pounded into them; the empty shoes; the man smoking in bed, staring at the ceiling: these images exude that sense of futility that almost all artists must periodically endure. Sometimes there is the relief of simple pleasures: a pile of cherries, a sandwich, sitting with one’s wife and looking out the window at the sunset. And then there is the junk-covered hillside with the gravestone at its foot presciently marked P. G. 1980.

Today the drawings don’t look as shockingly crude as they did to critics in the 1970s. They look like the work of a brilliant cartoonist knowingly inspired by 'Mutt and Jeff,' 'Krazy Kat' and other classic Sunday funnies. They may appear Neanderthal, but they are the products of a sophisticated performance, a kind of method acting."

(Image: Philip Guston, Artist in His Studio, 1969)
- posted by cjb @ 1:17 PM


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