The Art Newspaper, November 2, 2023, “The Big Review: Philip Guston at Tate Modern – The long-delayed London survey is a revelatory tour de force that charts the twists and turns of the Canadian-American artist’s 50-year career,” by Matthew Holman
The Times, September 23, 2023, “‘My father, Philip Guston, would be offended by the reaction to his show.’ The painter of cartoon Klansmen had his Tate show cancelled. Now it is back on. His daughter talks to Laura Freeman about the controversy,” by Laura Freeman
The Times, October 3, 2023, “Philip Guston review – beyond the controversy, marvel at the craft – Tate Modern,” by Laura Freeman
Evening Standard, October 3, 2023, “Philip Guston at Tate Modern review: riven with anger, engorged with love, haunted by suffering,” by Ben Luke
The Guardian, October 3, 2023, “‘What would it be like to be evil?’ Controversial Philip Guston show ridicules the virus-like KKK,” by Adrian Searle
The Telegraph, October 3, 2023, “Philip Guston: timeless art that skewers evil with a savage intensity. From his Holocaust-derived imagery to Ku Klux Klan figures, Guston does not set out to ingratiate – and the results are astonishing,” by Alastair Sooke
The Independent, October 4, 2023, “Philip Guston at Tate Modern review: An extraordinary, startling show full of moral disquiet,” by Mark Hudson
Financial Times, October 5, 2023, “Philip Guston, Tate Modern review – violent, unsettling and thrilling from start to finish. The decade’s most controversial exhibition features some of postwar America’s most original, potent images,” by Jackie Wullschläger
The Arts Desk, October 5, 2023, “Philip Guston, Tate Modern review – a compelling look at an artist who derided the KKK,” by Sarah Kent
Artlyst, October 6, 2023, “Philip Guston Tate Modern Worth The Wait,” by Sue Hubbard
Strand Magazine, October 6, 2023, “Review: Philip Guston at Tate Modern,” by Ernest Chlopicki
The New Statesman, October 8, 2023, “Philip Guston’s American Monsters. His 1960s paintings of Ku Klux Klansmen confront the banality of evil – and retain their power to shock,” by Michael Prodger
The Sunday Times, October 8, 2023, “Philip Guston: forget the Ku Klux Klan row, this show is unmissable,” by Waldemar Januszczak
The Observer, October 8, 2023, “Philip Guston; Sarah Lucas: Happy Gas review – tragi-comic cartoonery. Tate Modern; Tate Britain, London. The delayed Philip Guston retrospective opens at last – and it is mordant, magnificent, unmissable…,” by Laura Cummings
FAD Magazine, October 9, 2023, “Philip Guston’s First Major UK Retrospective in 20 Years Opens at Tate Modern,” by Mark Westall
The Conversation, October 10, 2023, “Philip Guston: controversial delayed Tate show asks ‘what would it be like to be evil?,'” by Clare Carolin
ArtReview, October 13, 2023, “Philip Guston and the Politics of Painted Images,” by J.J. Charlesworth
Studio International, October 19, 2023, “Philip Guston – This strait-laced, work-focused retrospective affirms Philip Guston’s place as one of the 20th century’s finest painters,” by Joe Lloyd
The Week, October 20, 2023, “Philip Guston review: a ‘five-star show’ at Tate Modern – New retrospective traces ‘Guston’s progress’ over a long, varied career,” by The Week staff
The Spectator, October 21, 2023, “How Philip Guston became a hero to a new generation of figurative painters,” by Laura Gascoigne
Le Journal des Arts, October 24, 2023, “Philip Guston réhabilité,” by Itzhak Goldberg
Apollo, October 24, 2023, “Taking Philip Guston on his own terms,” by Hettie Judah
The Observer, November 9, 2023, “Tate Modern Reveals Philip Guston’s Hoodwink. After courting controversy in America, the artist’s retrospective arrives mostly unmoderated in London,” by Nathan Smith
In Conversation: Musa Mayer & Adam Gopnik on ‘Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston’
Hauser & Wirth, NY, October 18, 2023: “On the occasion of Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ new edition of ‘Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston’ by Musa Mayer, the artist’s daughter [talks about] the book, its new afterword and Guston’s legacy, with writer Adam Gopnik.”
Musa Guston Mayer reflects on her father’s art and its legacy. Read more.
Musa Guston Mayer takes us into the studio of her father, the artist Philip Guston, reflecting on her relationship with him and the future of his legacy.
Installation view: Philip Guston Now, National Gallery Of Art, Washington, DC, 2023. Courtesy National Gallery Of Art.
The Brooklyn Rail, June 2023, “Reflections on Philip Guston Now” — Personal reflections from artists Dan Nadel, Michelle Segre, Joe Bradley, Archie Rand and Steve DiBenedetto
Forward, June 5, 2023, “How a Jewish ‘witness of hell’ navigated a landscape of American terror,” by Diane Cole
The Hudson Review, Spring 2023, “Philip Guston in Boston, Houston, and Washington,” by Karen Wilkin
Hyperallergic, June 28, 2023, “11 Art Books to Add to Your Reading List This Summer,” by Lakshmi Rivera Amin
New York, The Sun, May 29, 2023, “The Art World Recovers From Its Guston Derangement Syndrome,” by Mario Naves
Installation view: Philip Guston Now, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2023. Courtesy the National Gallery of Art
Phong Bui, Publisher and Artistic Director of The Brooklyn Rail, takes us on an intimate and detailed tour of the retrospective Philip Guston Now currently on view at the National Gallery of Art through August 27. With a congratulatory nod to Harry Cooper, curator and head of modern and contemporary art at NGA, Bui commends the exhibition’s “intention to present the works without spoon-feeding or condescending to the viewers.”
Bui writes of “disappointment and frustration upon hearing the news of the second postponement of [the] Philip Guston Now exhibition (the first due to COVID-19) because of a profound misunderstanding of what the paintings that are now being shown at the National Gallery of Art are really about. They are the paintings of a fearless truth teller…”
“Guston’s self-conscious decision to question every possible realm of human existence is understandable. This includes not just spiritual, social, and political metaphors, but also of everyday events, routines that involve our relationship with things, and objects that are made to perform certain functions.”
The retrospective is “perfectly calibrated to each phase of the painter’s evolution” from 1930 to 1980. “The result is a poetic redemption of everything that had derailed Guston’s own power of ‘negative capability’.“
(Philip Guston Now travels to the Tate Modern in London, October 5, 2023 – February 25, 2024.)
A selection of works from Musa Mayer’s gift will be on view in a special installation opening May 27, 2023. The display, which will focus on the artist’s deeply philosophical approach to the nature of artistic identity and the aesthetic possibilities of painting, will be organized by Kelly Baum, Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Curator of Contemporary Art in The Met’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Cooper, Harry, Mark Godfrey, Alison de Lima Greene, and Kate Nesin. Philip Guston Now. Exh. cat. Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2020.
One year ago, the National Gallery of Art announced an updated schedule for the Philip Guston retrospective. All of the original museums have affirmed their continued involvement and enthusiasm to show the entire scope of Guston’s 50 year career.
This major exhibition will be initiated at MFA Boston at the beginning of May—not so very long to wait! Here are all the dates:
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, May 1, 2022 – September 11, 2022 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, October 23, 2022 – January 15, 2023 National Gallery of Art, Washington, February 26, 2023 – August 27, 2023 Tate Modern, October 3, 2023 – February 25, 2024
