PHILIP
GUSTON: THE MAN, HIS LIFE, AND HIS WORK
by
Dorothy Koppelman
Continued:
Part 2
It is to Guston's credit
that he was not able to smother that fight in himself between the desire
to see, which is in those beautiful paintings we can look at now, and the
desire to have a kind of strutting—and painful to himself—contempt.
He was a victim of the press
boycott of Aesthetic Realism and of his own snobbishness. From l94l to
l947 teaching at the University of Iowa Guston knew several persons who
spoke to him of what they were learning from Eli Siegel. Guston's desire
to find the outside world against him and his refusal to see the beautiful
evidence that contradicted that hope, made him deeply despise himself.
I think that when he won a Guggenheim fellowship and a prestigious Prix
de Rome, and left for Venice in l948 he may have been proud of his work,
but felt he did not deserve a certain praise for his soul. In Rome, he
wrote of how he "suffered a depression" and could not paint. There is a
dark, angry way of seeing in his abstract drawings—dark blacks literally
dig into the paper. There is a painful relation of confusion and abstract
form. Then he did these drawings with their mingling of poignancy and self-mockery,
their comic-strip feeling. These works fairly shout their self-criticism
but not a single art critic saw that the artist did not like himself. About
these works, Guston wrote: "I perceive myself behind the hoods." |
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I attended a talk given
by Mr. Guston at the Museum of Modern Art in the early l950s. The artist
was talking about how artists have been misunderstood, and that comprehension
was really impossible. During the discussion period I told Mr. Guston that
in my study with Eli Siegel my hopes as a person and my intention as an
artist had been greatly understood; I had heard the criticism and encouragement
every artist hopes for. I was studying Eli Siegel's great Aesthetic Realism
principle: "The resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of
opposites in art." Guston hurt his heart, his mind, his life by acting
as if he did not want to hear what I was saying. Like many artists, he
got such a mistaken false glory out of feeling he could not be understood.
The harm of this contempt for the minds of people is incalculable.
THE
TECHNIQUE OF LIKING OURSELVES IS THE TECHNIQUE OF ART
The hope of Philip Guston to
like himself and the world at the same time is in one of his most beautiful
works, To B.W.T.—another artist, Bradley Walker Tomlin. There is
a oneness of almost congested thickness, a hint of depths, a shimmering
back and forth of weight and dull darks and glowing oranges—and then a
spreading resolution of two things—one, the discomfort of weight and the
other a wide lightness. Luminous pinks, warm greys; and the glowing red-oranges
play in a vertical and horizontal melody with soft greens, dull pinks.
Solid depth is simultaneous with a pulsating light on a surface. |
To
B.W.T.
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To Eli Siegel's liberating
question Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites? this painting gives
a great and lasting Yes; one feels the "serenity and stir" Mr. Siegel described
as the effect of all good painting.
When Philip Guston changed
his way of painting and showed in an exhibition in l970, he said he wanted
to be close to "thingness," to the "images of things." I admired that desire
immensely. I believe he wanted to declare his sameness to other graspable
objects, to see objects as criticism of his desire to hide. Painter's
Table says I am like you, irons, boot soles, nails, books, round cigarette
ashtrays and round light bulbs. Don't we all share a pink table—pink like
my flesh? Flatlands is a lineup of hooded heads, a pink foot, fingers,
clocks, a jolly pink sun, and two hooded heads confronting one another,
all sharing a democratic surface—no disproportionate, self-assertion here.
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Painter's
Table
The principle we have to
go on, to study, in order to like ourselves is this, stated by Eli Siegel:
"In reality opposites are one; art shows this"—and reality includes ourselves.
In Aesthetic Realism consultations
we ask, for instance: "Are you like this table?—hard and soft, rough and
smooth? Is this a warm color?—How does the color go with the hard edges
of the table? What could you learn from this table?—Are you the same and
different from other people who have reality's opposites in them?
When we feel both "snug"
under our skin as Eli Siegel has described it and at the same time, we
like "All That," the actual objects, the streets, the rain, the wind, having
flatness and depth, force and gentleness, coldness and warmth we are experiencing
the lovely oneness of self and world and you are liking yourself.
Looking at Philip Guston
and his work I am grateful that their heretofore mute message, so poignantly
waiting, became clearer to me through what I learned from Aesthetic Realism:
the purpose of art, like the purpose of life, is honestly to like
the world.
Dorothy Koppelman is a painter
and on the Aesthetic Realism faculty. This discussion of Philip Guston
was adapted from her paper "How Can We Really Like Ourselves?" given as
part of a seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, l4l Greene Street,
New York City, on Sept. l8, l997.
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