Review of Primal Instincts

Title of article: Offering a Painter for History's Reconsideration
Author: Roberta Smith
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 07, 2008

Philip Guston said it best when he said that he wanted, “to paint things as if one had never seen them before, as if one had come from another planet.” He wanted to “paint as a cave man would.” Philip Guston (1913-1980) was an abstract expressionist, later on becoming a painter of dark, comic images. He revered to Italian Renaissance paintings and collaborated in the ‘70’s on drawings with novelist’s and composers, in order to combine words and images. Now, there are exhibitions presenting 100 drawings dating from 1946 to 1980. In this show, the first episode of Guston’s life is skipped in order to, as the author states, “giving a clearer picture of the continual struggle with abstraction and representation that defined his mature art. Once he got over his “dry spell,” he started making cartoonish images of three people in Ku Klux Klan hoods and robes. He also transformed studio photographs showing scores of drawings sequentially pinned to the walls. At the end of Philip Guston’s life he turned is K.K.K. workers as symbols of political protest. He even went on to draw a “monstrous” caricature of Richard M. Nixon. Back then, his work has harshly criticized. Today, we have been desensitized and his work doesn’t look that shockingly crude. Critics have even said that his work is brilliant, comparing it to “Mutt and Jeff,” and “Krazy Kat.”