E8 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.
Instead, to an almost comical degree, this
revised version of the exhibition exemplifies a
conflict between an old idea of art as an index to
everything that is profound, slippery, enigmatic
and unknowable and a new conception of art
museums as places peddling “wellness,” promot-
ing wokeness and finding institutional purpose in
the culture of therapy.
“Philip Guston Now” frames Guston’s profound
and complicated oeuvre with patronizing wall
labels. At the entrance to the exhibition and on the
museum’s website, we are offered an “Emotional
Preparedness” statement by health and trauma
specialist Ginger Klee, MS, LMFT, LPCC. Patrons
are also offered an opportunity to exit the exhibi-
tion ahead of the gallery showing some of Gusto-
cartoonlikelike images of crude, deliberately pa-
thetic figures with Ku Klux Klan hoods.
Many will say these were necessary steps. I
respectfully disagree, and will add that, as with
the original postponement in 2020, the whole
thing smells of bad faith — of art institutions not
so much making amends as covering their badly
exposed rear ends. If, as an institution, you
recognize (as almost every major U.S. museum has
over the past two years) that you have failed to
engage adequately with the Black community, to
honor sufficiently the achievements of Black
artists, and to hire and support Black staff in
important positions; if you acknowledge the lega-
cy of slavery, segregation, lynching and the many
ongoing injustices in our divided society, then it’s
past time to act productively on all these fronts.
In the meantime, it makes zero sense to make
Philip Guston the scapegoat for your failings.
Guston, who was Jewish and clearly not a racist
(he had a record of anti-Klan activism), was a
powerful artist and a vital influence on subse-
quent generations of artists, including many
internationally famous Black artists. Since we
seem to be in the business of stating the obvious,
I’ll note that you’re free to not like his work. But we
really don’t need a wall text headed “MFA Staff
Ask: Why does Guston matter?” which begins
“Truthfully, when we first began convening as a
staff group, the consensus was that — despite the
art world telling us that Guston mattered — to us,
it felt the opposite.”
The good news? This committee’s “thinking
evolved.”
The bad news? MFA staff, you are wasting
everyone’s time with this drivel.
Thankfully, there are also insightful wall labels
and smart and suggestive pairings of art. But the
design of the exhibition is crowded and clumsy. An
attempt in one gallery to create a makeshift room
resembling Guston’s Woodstock, N.Y., studio is
half-baked and ineffective. There is far too much
text. And there are too many intrusive video clips
and screens showing interviews and contempo-
rary n ews footage. The curators clearly think their
“framing” of the work is more important than the
art itself.
So what about the art? What about Philip
Guston, now that we are finally allowed (with
caveats) to see him?
Born in Montreal in 1913, he died in Woodstock
in 1980. Guston was b ipolar. He t alked a lot, drank
a lot, smoked a lot. His father, an immigrant from
Odessa, had hanged himself (Guston, still a boy,
discovered the body). His brother’s legs were
crushed in a car accident and later amputated. He
was a Jew in the 20th century. ... One could
obviously say much more.
His artistic career divides into three main
phases: 1. Figurative work motivated by leftist
political convictions and influenced by Mexican
muralists. 2. Abstraction, in a style dubbed “ab-
stract impressionism” (critics thought Guston’s
quavering, hypersensitive touch resembled late
Monet). 3. A return to figuration at the end of the
1960 s, initially denounced, later applauded.
The early political work, crowded with cacoph-
onous forms, is uneven but can be sensationally
good. (“If This Be Not I,” from 1945, is a riveting
painting). The abstract paintings, beginning in
1950, have dated badly, but the small selection
here makes a good case for them.
It’s the final phase, the decade-long return to
figuration, on which Guston’s reputation rests
today. These paintings and drawings were in-
spired by the violence and political chaos of the
late 1960s and by the (not unrelated) noise in the
artist’s own head. They are a wonderfully unlikely
fusion of underground comics, abstract expres-
sionist mark-making, the Italian artists Guston
had long revered (Piero della Francesca and
Giorgio de Chirico among them) and the poetry heGUSTON FROM E1ArProfART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO/EST
PRIVATE COLLECTION/ESTATE OF PHILIP GUSTON, COURTESY OF HAUSER & WIRTH/MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK/ESTATE OF PHILIP GUSTON, COURTESY OF HAUSER & WIRTH/LICENSED BY SCALA/ART RESOURCE, NY