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Remembering Philip Guston (New York Review Books Classics)
by Ross Feld
In this warm and vibrant work of memoir and criticism, a young writer forges a friendship with Philip Guston, one of the most influential and controversial painters of the twentieth century.
The late work of Philip Guston has had a profound influence on painters today, but as Guston's star has risen, it has been forgotten how scandalous these paintings, with their cartoonish imagery and almost fumbling application of paint, were initially deemed to be. The 1970 show at the Marlborough Gallery in which Guston, abandoning the delicate abstract expressionism for which he was known, revealed his new style, was critically savaged. In the aftermath of this drubbing, he retreated to his studio in Woodstock, New York—in part to nurse his wounds but, more important, to go on painting exactly as he saw fit.
Ross Feld, a young poet, novelist, and critic, was one of the rare critics to respond favorably to Guston's late work. Guston answered with a grateful note, and a new friendship was soon born. Guston in Time, written not long before Feld's early death from cancer, is a portrait of Guston the man; and of his wife, Musa, a major figure not only in his life but in his work; a reckoning with his supremely individual achievement as an artist; and a work of art in its own right.
A retrospective of Guston's work, Philip Guston Now, will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from May 1 to September 11, 2022; at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from October 23, 2022, to January 15, 2023; at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., from February 26 to August 27, 2023; and at the Tate Modern, London, from October 3, 2023 to February 4, 2024.
"A moving memorial to a deep and supportive friendship... Feld's readings of a number of [Guston's] paintings, informed by his intimacy with the artist, are near-definitive models of passionate clarity and explication... This book is valuable, too, for the light it sheds on the often ill-understood reciprocal nature of the relationship between artists and critics... [A] remarkable volume, which recalls Rilke's Letters on Cezanne in its joyful intensity." —Publishers Weekly
"An affectionate homage... Feld escorts the reader through Guston's idiosyncratic iconography and in a loosely chronological fashion easily moves from anecdote to analysis of paintings... Feld's effortless prose sets the reader in the studio, in the kitchen, in an Italian restaurant, as he captures his friend's animus." —Kirkus Reviews
This information about Guston in Time was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ross Feld (1947–2001) is the author of the novels Years Out, Only Shorter, Shapes Mistaken, and Zwilling's Dream, and a collection of poetry, Plum Poems. He befriended Philip Guston in 1976 after reviewing a show by the artist, and the two maintained a close relationship until Guston's death in 1980.
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