Philip Guston in his artist quotes on painting art & life - free resource, American art history

Phillip Guston in quotes - the American artist on his painting art of ‘stories in images’ and about his artistic life in Canada and the U.S. - free art-resource for students, pupils and teachers in American art history

.
In his artist quotes Phillip Guston explains in his quotes his painting art as a kind of story-telling in images. After some years purely Abstract Expressionism painting Guston made between 1958-67 a radical swift from abstract painting to a style with a story. He calls his inspirations of old masters in that swift, like Rembrandt and De Chirico.

Characteristic for his art are Guston’s ‘symbols’ and his frequent use of daily objects and people like American Ku Kux-Klansman, light bulbs, shoes, cigarettes, faces, clocks, lamps, and other kind of daily things. They all appear in his canvasses - painted in a striking way. His quotes reveal an American, but much-travelling painter-artist, mainly through Italy.
.
Some selected artist-quotes of American artist Phillip Guston - as a short introduction of his extended quotes in the PDF:

• ’There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from abstract art: That painting is autonomous, pure and for itself… .But painting is ‘impure’. It is the adjustment of ‘impurities’, which forces painting’s continuity. We are image-makers and image-ridden.’ - quote of Guston, 1960; from a transcript of the panel, March 1960, held at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, United States

• ’There are so many things to paint in the world – in the cities – so much to see. Does art need to represent this variety and contribute to its proliferation? Can art be that free? The difficulties begin when you understand what it is that the soul will not permit the hand to make.’ - his quote of 1966 in: ‘ARTnews Annual’, Oct. 1966; p. 102

• ’It is the bareness of drawing that I like. The act of drawing is what locates, suggests, discovers.’ - Guston’s quote in ‘ARTnews Annual’, Oct. 1966; p. 152
  .
  selection of free art-resources on American artist Philip Guston:

  • extended biographical notes on Phillip Guston, on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Guston
  • artist-quotes of ànd about Guston, on Wikiquote: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Phillip_Guston
  • images of his painting art, on Wikiart: https://www.wikiart.org/en/philip-guston
    .
    editor: Fons Heijnsbroek / Matrozenhof (FotoDutch on Wikiquote):<br>[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/User:FotoDutch]