| Change is much more painful than progress, yet infinitely more rewarding. Imagine if Guston decided to continue with his muted abstractions? Imagine if he succumbed to the pressure of expectation from dealers and collectors? Then I imagine he would exist as a marginal abstract expressionist who rode the wave of America’s first great art movement. Luckily for us, change prevailed, and he knew there was little time left to get the new work out into the world. One of the most notable drawing in the show is of the clock Untitled. The short hand is pointed at seven while the long hand sits idly at 12. His anxiety of time running out is omnipresent throughout his late work, but this drawing of the clock specifically signifies the meaning of how much time he thought was left for him. | 
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James Gillispie
Philip Guston, Works on Paper was on display at the Morgan Library and Museum from May 2 to August 31, 2008.
Philip Guston, Untitled, 1980. Courtesy of the Estate of Philip Guston, Private Collection.Philip Guston has a knockout show of drawings at the Morgan Library. In this exhibition of 100 drawings, he reminds us of why he is the greatest anxious painter of American art. Despite being accused of being a ham-fisted draftsman, this resilient show of drawings proves that Guston was in fact a deft mark-maker, and capable of purity even throughout his late career.
Change is much more painful than progress, yet infinitely more rewarding. Imagine if Guston decided to continue with his muted abstractions? Imagine if he succumbed to the pressure of expectation from dealers and collectors? Then I imagine he would exist as a marginal abstract expressionist who rode the wave of America’s first great art movement.
Luckily for us, change prevailed, and he knew there was little time left to get the new work out into the world. One of the most notable drawing in the show is of the clock Untitled. The short hand is pointed at seven while the long hand sits idly at 12. His anxiety of time running out is omnipresent throughout his late work, but this drawing of the clock specifically signifies the meaning of how much time he thought was left for him. If 12 o’clock is a life’s revolution, then there are only four hours left to finish and develop the new direction in his work.
Much is written about the rejection of his late work by the art world, but this was much less important to Guston than mortality itself. There is so much more intention in the late drawings, greatly exemplified in Untitled, where the artist made just one lone hash mark in the top center of the page. This “pure” mark could be a cigarette butt or a comma but the opportunity for Guston was precious, and shows that even the least busy drawing in the show could be his most meaningful. A security guard stood next to this drawing, smiling quietly about this piece. Something so simple taking up space on these celebrated walls seemed absurd to him. This is where I must applaud the curator of this show.
In Guston’s late drawings, he took refuge in life’s simple pleasures. For example, the drawings in the show of an egg-and-bacon sandwich (the oxidant) hanging above a quick and masterfully drawn pile of cherries (the anti-oxidant) gives us a beautiful glimpse into the mundane part of this great artist’s life. Another part of it that we get to peek into is his friendships with great poets and authors such as Philip Roth and Clark Coolidge. These personal and revealing drawings have a casualness to them that makes a voyeur out of the audience. At this point in Guston’s career, there wass no separation of his life from his art; this gave him a freedom that most artists never achieve.
Guston’s great shift of his late career was not about painting like a caveman, or abandoning his classical skills. It was accomplishing a lifelong struggle for complete command of painting. It was crude and cartoonish, offensive to the art world, and yet kept intact the progression from even his earliest work. The most prolific years of Guston’s painting career could not have been possible without the brevity and clairvoyance achieved in these drawings. Simultaneity of his life and art came to order. This should remind all artists that a lifetime is often not enough to make great art.
