Philip Guston Now

A sweeping retrospective of Philip Guston-s influential work, from Depression-era muralist to abstract expressionist to tragicomic contemporary master

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Philip Guston-perhaps more than any other figure in recent memory-has given contemporary artists permission to break the rules and paint what, and how, they want. His winding career, embrace of -high- and -low- sources, and constant aesthetic reinvention defy easy categorization, and his 1968 figurative turn is by now one of modern art-s most legendary conversion narratives. -I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening in America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything-and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?-

And so Guston-s sensitive abstractions gave way to large, cartoonlike canvases populated by lumpy,