{"id":548,"date":"2019-08-06T12:30:10","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T12:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.philipguston.org\/?p=548"},"modified":"2020-06-02T15:24:38","modified_gmt":"2020-06-02T15:24:38","slug":"in-praise-of-paintings-ambiguity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.philipguston.org\/index.php\/2019\/08\/06\/in-praise-of-paintings-ambiguity\/","title":{"rendered":"In Praise of Painting\u2019s Ambiguity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In his Hyperallergic article, In Praise of Painting’s Ambiguity<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, writer and critic John Yau responds to an email he received following his review of artist Amy Bennett\u2019s exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his article, he discusses Philip Guston\u2019s rejection of abstraction throughout the late 1960s. During a lecture at the University of Minnesota in 1978, Guston said that he had grown tired of a certain ambiguity stemming from the late 40s and 50s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think that probably the most potent desire for a painter, an image maker, is to see it. To see what the mind can think and imagine, to realize it for oneself, through oneself, as concretely as possible. I think that\u2019s the most powerful and at the same time the most archaic urge that has endured for about twenty-five thousand years.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yau explains that Guston viewed a painter as an image maker, and that an image could be abstract or representational coming from anything and anywhere. Like Bennett drawing inspiration from Thornton Wilder\u2019s Our Town<\/em>, she brings it to the present moment, all while keeping the painting open.<\/p>\n

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