‘What would it be like to be evil?’ Controversial Philip Guston show ridicules the virus-like KKK

Delayed after the murder of George Floyd, this show has now arrived in Britain accompanied by warnings. Our critic revels in the American’s cartoonish renderings of everyday objects – and the hate groups lurking in our midst

In 1970, Philip Guston, who was the most quietly painterly of the generation of abstract American artists known as the abstract expressionists, revealed a new body of work at Marlborough Gallery in New York. Instead of the aggregations of clumpy brushwork, the atmospheric jumbles and close-toned indeterminacies of the works that had made his name over the previous two decades, here, suddenly, were cartoonish depictions of pointy-hatted Ku Klux Klansmen, going about their business of idiot evil. They ruminate in their rooms, drive around looking for trouble, paint and smoke in a world as clunky and cartoonish as they are. All Guston’s skills were pressed into a new and parodic purpose.

This cartoonish, figurative late style shocked the art world and alienated the artist from many of his friends. The new paintings were derided, called “as simple-minded as the bigotry they denounce”, and Guston was labelled “a mandarin pretending to be a stumblebum”. The pile-on was horrible. At the opening, only Willem de Kooning told Guston he was envious. “It’s about freedom,” De Kooning said.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/D47fjpW

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