Guston in Time: Remembering Philip Guston

by Ross Feld

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681376615
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	05/24/2022
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	1,011,139
Product dimensions:	4.99(w) x 7.97(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

1 Allegory 7

2 Web 15

3 Source 25

4 Blue Light 35

5 Talking 49

6 Friend 61

7 If This Be Not I 79

8 Accor 91

Appendix: The Philip Guston/Ross Feld Letters 105

Editor's Note 161

Editorial Reviews

"Feld’s book, published shortly after the writer’s death in 2001, is as much a critical exegesis of Guston’s work as it is a memoir of their acquaintance. It’s also an homage to the artist and his willingness to think outside the box. Excerpts from Guston’s letters allow readers to hear his voice as they’re taken through his work and its stylistic heresies, which are emulated to this day." —Howard Halle, ArtNews

"Quietly no less vital [than the exhibition catalog] in grasping Guston’s contribution to post-war American art and his abiding significance to contemporary painters. . . . Among those who best captured the painter’s final-decade achievements was Ross Feld, another poet and a rare moral support after he’d been shunned by the art world—even by old friends like the composer Morton Feldman—following his figurative rupture." —Ben Luke, The Art Newspaper

"These two high-octane minds in dialogue, in deep, respectful friendship, resound in their letters like a piano sonata for four hands that’s part Schubert, part Busoni. And then there’s the enclosing arch of Feld’s visionary evocation of Guston’s quest and Guston’s vulnerability. . . This is a beautiful, mysterious, generous book." —Susan Sontag

"Guston’s art never goosestepped in time to aesthetic orthodoxy. Neither does Ross Feld’s exhilarating, stylistically-inventive book. Part criticism, part memoir, part meditation on art and death, Guston In Time is a revealing portrait of not only the painter, but of a passionate friendship. “We are necessary absolutely to each other,” Guston declared to Feld. Witnessing this duet of ferocious yet generous intelligences, we can see why. Feld argues that to create, an artist must both expose himself and hide—often at the same time. What a privilege it is to share both men’s creative processes." —Lisa Zeidner

"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

"This irresistible hybrid—part memoir, part art criticism, part biography, part meditation on death—employs language with such richness that it seems a species of prose poetry. The combination of Feld’s startlingly insightful writing with the astonishing candor of Guston’s letters, is unique and compelling. . . . Looked at one way, this book is a small, perfect elegy; looked at another, it is an even more complicated achievement. The three modes that Feld nominates as central to Guston’s art—“theatrical, asymmetrically plural and philosophical”—are Feld’s own strengths as well and this book fairly vibrates with their considered application." —Robert Enright

"Friendships and devoted correspondents across various disciplines give us a special glimpse into why we are all involved in this thing called culture. The Guston-Feld correspondences have the immediacy and urgency that we usually experience only in artists’ studios in front of new work or over drinks and a pack of cigarettes throwing around new ideas. Reading this book you can taste the scotch and smell the smoke, and feel the ideas forming." —Micheal Auping

"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

From the Publisher

The appearance of the critic, novelist and poet Feld's engaging memoir of his late friend the painter Philip Guston (1913-1980) records a double loss, for Feld died in 2001, shortly after its completion. And although the book functions as a moving memorial to a deep and supportive friendship, Feld the critic forgoes the tired parade of anecdotes common to the personal memoir to keep a keen focus on Guston's work, especially the paintings of his last years. Scott Fitzgerald's "there are no second acts in American lives" has been disproved over and over again; Guston added a third act that was unlike anything in the history of art, American or otherwise. Beginning as a muralist in the great Mexican social realist tradition, Guston went on, as many before him, to become an abstract expressionist, but one of uncommon lyric power. But late in his career, Guston returned to figuration, employing motifs from early work (such as hooded Klan figures, now with cigars) and truncated self-portraiture (eyes, heads and enormous-footed sleeping figures) that seemed derived as much from Robert Crumb and the Sunday funnies as from the "historical tradition." Feld's readings of a number of these paintings, informed by his intimacy with the artist, are near-definitive models of passionate clarity and explication. Interwoven with these readings are similarly vivid glimpses of a troubled but lovable man, and the friends-including Philip Roth, composer Morton Feldman and poet Clark Coolidge-whose devotion to Guston is equally palpable. The book is valuable, too, for the light it sheds on the often ill-understood reciprocal nature of the relationships between artists and critics. For just as it is clear that for Guston Feld's articulate support was crucial, Guston's responses to Feld's criticism and other work seems just as important. Guston himself is abundantly present, not only in Feld's reminiscences and the well-chosen illustrations, but in the many letters to Feld that are included. Such generosity is typical of this remarkable volume, which recalls Rilke's "Letters on Cezanne" in its joyful intensity. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Following his much-derided break from pure abstract art, the American artist Philip Guston (1913-80) wrote a letter to the novelist and critic Feld (Zwilling's Dream), initiating a stimulating friendship that would span the last five years of Guston's life. Prior to his own death in 2001, Feld assembled this collection of personal reminiscences and anecdotes from his dynamic interaction with one of 20th-century America's most enigmatic artists. Though perfectly timed to correspond with the retrospective exhibition of Guston's work organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (see Michael Auping's excellent Philip Guston Retrospective), this biography/remembrance/collected letters suffers from a lack of identity and focus. Rather than a critical analysis of Guston's late work, it is a record of the intellectual sparring match between two dear friends. Each chapter of the book's first section begins with a letter or excerpt, but these are not fully identified or reproduced in full in the otherwise chronological compilation of letters that follows. The "Letters" section offers a wonderful epistolary record of the dialog between artist and writer; however, the format and arrangement of the book hinders any straightforward examination of the letters. Recommended only for libraries wishing to supplement existing Guston scholarship.-Kraig Binkowski, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A concise interpretive biography and memoir of the renegade Abstract Expressionist by his friend, the late novelist Feld (Zwilling’s Dream, 1999, etc.), for many years a Kirkus reviewer. Philip Guston (1913–80) is perhaps best known for his scandalous conversion to figurative art in 1970 at the height of his career as an Abstract Expressionist, contemporary of Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. Feld’s account of Guston, while briefly covering his early life and career as a card-carrying AbEx, is primarily an affectionate homage to the artist and the works he created after his change of style, the period when Feld (who died in 2001) knew him personally. Punctuated by letters from Guston that allow the artist to speak for himself, the author describes and analyzes the deeply personal works from the last decade of Guston’s life that he believes are his friend’s landmark paintings. Feld escorts the reader through Guston’s idiosyncratic iconography and in a loosely chronological fashion easily moves from anecdote to analysis of paintings. Guston’s intellect, his curiosity, his generosity, his "nearly limitless appetite for talk," and his insecurity are all fodder for this candid tale of an artist whose late works have acquired a contemporary influence inconceivable at the time of their creation. Feld’s effortless prose sets the reader in the studio, in the kitchen, in an Italian restaurant, as he captures his friend’s animus. An added bonus is the inclusion of the pair’s correspondence (minus the Guston letters quoted in the main text) in an appendix, which allows the reader to observe the evolution of this energetic intellectual and personal friendship. As good an introduction to classicGuston as one will find, not merely as an artist but as an intellectual. (18 b&w photos) (A major Philip Guston retrospective is appearing now through September at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; October through January at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and at the Royal Academy in London in 2004.)

Kirkus Reviews