Customer Reviews

Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations (Documents of Twentieth-Century Art)

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The best most exciting book I've read in a very long time about painting written from the inside. It is for artists and not art lovers. Guston's mind is a delightful place to be and he writes and speaks about painting with rigor, humor and honesty in a way that will force you to call into question your assumptions about what painting is. The interviews and transcripts of impromptu discussions are marvelous-- many published here for the first time. Why it took this long for this book to come out is a mystery. This stands alongside Picasso on Art, Matisse's writings on art, and Sylvester's interviews with Giacometti as one of the great documents of a 20th Century artist struggling with the question of what is possible.

Philip Guston, one of the most important artists of the XXth century had this rare ability of being able to talk about art as well as he made it. His vast culture enabled him to draw inspiration from everyone from the Renaissance masters (Piero della Francesca) to Italian modernists (de Chirico), from Kierkegaard to Kafka, from Beethoven to his close friend Morton Feldman, etc.

This book is a compendium of lectures, conversations, interviews, in which the artist delivers a vision about his world, about art, about mankind, that is one of the deepest I, as a reader, have encountered. There are also some vivid accounts of the artist's experiences with Renaissance art, such as his visits to Arezzo and the shock he received when first confronted with Piero's frescoes depicting the Legend of the Cross. I personally think that there is nothing better than to listen to an artist speak about another artist and this is precisely what this book enables us to do.

I beg to differ with the previous reviewer:this book is for everyone; for everyone interested in art, in thinking and in reading, and for everyone who can make the effort of going beyond the obvious. Guston was a great artist, but he also was a great thinker and a great talker.

Highly recommended.

I dont write reviews very often.
But this book deserves a recommendation.
Guston is not only a great painter and artist, but he is also a great talker and thinker.
This book contains writings lectures and conversations that you can read more then once.

Id like to quote Willam De Kooning
" You know,Philip,what your real subject is? It is freedom! "

This is an excellent book but potential buyers should take heed of the needs which they hope this book will satisfy for them. It is a collection, mostly of informal discussions, on the nature of Philip Guston's outlook on himself vis-a-vis his work, on the New York School (as he would prefer) or Abstract Expressionists, as they came to be known. The majority of these dialogs (or monologues) were held in gatherings of artists or art professionals. They are chronologically arranged with no systematic ordering or attempt at biographical exposition save for brief introductions by the author and by a major biographer, Dore Ashton. For those who have not read biographies of the artist and seen major examples of his work, the contents should be bewildering at best and unintelligible, at worst. As any who have prepared transcripts from tapes, when what has been recorded is complex and the interchanges relatively frequent, will know, even the brightest and most intelligible in prepared talks or writings, can manage incomprehensibility in vocal exchanges. When they are highly informal, as in these cases, the problems are multiplied. In addition, even the best informed auditors are going to be in trouble when in conversation with long time friends of philosophical and art historical sophistication, such as Harold Rosenberg.
For those ready for these exchanges however, the book will likely be what I like to call, dull and exciting. Reading through such materials is never an enjoyable experience in itself; however, when one is interested in the content, and one is able to gain new experience, then it can also be exciting regardless of the nature of the vehicle. So I found these exhibits of Guston's talk to be; they are the closest those who did not know him or hear him,in the flesh, so to speak, will ever come to being at one of these gatherings. While not nearly the same as being at the same table in the Cedar Tavern or one of the other hangouts in which these lusty drinkers ( the New York abstract artists) spoke with each other, yelled, agreed, disagreed, were profound and trivial, were professionals and friends, professionals and envying colleagues, still it is better than nothing. More than anywhere else in print, one hears (imaginatively) Guston's expressing and reiterating his deepest feelings about his work, gropingly, tentatively, ambiguously, affirmatively, argumentatively, but still with a cumulatively effective impact on the reader. On the other hand, one gets very little biographical detail beyond that necessary for him to make a point.
So, I found the book quite an interesting experience, others with some background, I believe, will also enjoy and profit from it. Other readers should weigh the risks for themselves.