Stretchers

Philip Guston

1979 · Oil on canvas · Modern and Contemporary Art

In this witty, self-reflexive painting, Guston's brushwork is textured and loose, evoking the painterly paradigm of abstract expressionism—the paradigm which, of course, definitively challenged the classical model of painting as "window" onto the world, and with which Guston himself was associated in the 1950s. In this regard, it is not insignificant that Guston’s work, with its loose brushwork and also its relatively flat colors and "sloppy" or freehand lines, echoes the stylization of naïve and comic book artists. In its juxtaposition of flatness and depth, transparency and opacity, representation and abstraction, painting and popular culture, Guston’s painting transcends its Dadaist premise of taking the blank canvas as a "readymade"—which is the theoretical "end" of painting—and offers its own idiosyncratic reimagining of painting as a discipline.

Artist

Philip Guston

Date

1979

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Partial and Promised Gift of Michael A. Rubenstein, from the collection of Michael A. Rubenstein and Juliet van Vliet Rubenstein, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary, 2019