Philip GUSTON (1911-1980)
Intro
A Psychological Exploration of Philip Guston's Life and Art
Philip Guston (1913–1980), born Phillip Goldstein to Ukrainian Jewish immigrant parents, led a life marked by early trauma, political engagement, and profound artistic evolution. While no formal psychiatric evaluation of Guston exists in the public record—art historians and critics have instead offered psychological interpretations of his work and biography—themes of anxiety, guilt, existential dread, and self-confrontation recur throughout his oeuvre. These can be understood through lenses like trauma response, repressed impulses, and the artist's own admissions of inner turmoil.
Early Life and Formative Trauma
Guston experienced significant childhood adversity. His family fled pogroms in Ukraine, settling first in Montreal and then Los Angeles. Economic hardship plagued them; his father, unable to provide adequately, died by suicide when Guston was young (around 10–11 years old). Guston discovered the body, a deeply scarring event. He retreated into drawing as a coping mechanism, often isolating himself in a closet lit by a single bulb—a motif that would later appear symbolically in his paintings (e.g., dangling light bulbs representing illumination amid darkness or vulnerability).
This early loss likely contributed to themes of depression, alienation, and moral anguish in his work. Biographers note Guston's lifelong struggles with self-doubt and periods of creative blockage, echoing depressive cycles. His shift from social realist murals in the 1930s—depicting anti-fascist and anti-racist themes, including early Ku Klux Klan figures as villains—to abstraction in the 1950s may reflect a desire to escape direct confrontation with personal and societal pain.
Guston's abstract expressionist works from the 1950s–1960s are characterized by lyrical, gestural forms that some interpreters see as masking underlying tension:
The Pivotal Shift: Anxiety and Return to Figuration
By the late 1960s, amid the Vietnam War, civil rights struggles, and personal crises (including marital strains and creative frustration), Guston abandoned abstraction. He famously declared abstract art a "lie" and "sham," a "cover-up for poverty of spirit" and fear of self-revelation. This shift—often described as a psychological breakthrough—stemmed from impatience with abstraction's detachment: "What kind of man am I... going into a frustrated fury about everything—and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?"
Psychologically, this can be viewed as rejecting repression in favor of confronting the unconscious. Guston's late works feature cartoonish, autobiographical elements: bulbous heads (often self-portraits), cigarettes (reflecting his heavy smoking and addiction struggles), piled limbs, and everyday "crapola" (clocks, shoes, bottles) symbolizing existential banality and compulsion.
His self-portraits are particularly introspective, depicting the artist as vulnerable, burdened, or absurd—suggesting themes of narcissism, guilt, and self-loathing mingled with humor.
The Klan Imagery: Confronting Evil and Complicity
The most psychologically charged element is Guston's recurring hooded Klansmen, originating in his 1930s anti-racism works but resurfacing in the late period as banal, everyday figures smoking, driving, or sewing hoods. Interpreters see this as exploring the "banality of evil" (echoing Hannah Arendt), personal complicity in societal ills, and repressed aggression. As a Jewish artist who changed his name to assimilate, Guston implicated himself in whiteness and passivity.
These images blend satire, horror, and self-accusation, potentially reflecting projected guilt or anxiety about impotence against injustice. Critics have noted their dreamlike, compulsive quality—repetitive motifs suggesting obsessive rumination.
Overall Psychological Profile
From available biographical and critical sources, Guston emerges as an artist driven by unresolved trauma, moral sensitivity, and a need for authenticity. His work oscillates between evasion (abstraction) and raw exposure (late figuration), suggesting a personality grappling with anxiety, addiction, and existential questions. He died of a heart attack at 66, amid prolific late productivity—perhaps a final surge against inner "doom."
Artistically, his legacy lies in using painting as psychic excavation: humorous yet harrowing, personal yet universal. As one critic noted, his late works embody "moral anguish" and the "human condition," turning private torment into profound commentary. This is not a clinical diagnosis but an interpretive synthesis grounded in Guston's own words and the recurring motifs of his art.
Philip Guston (1913–1980), born Phillip Goldstein to Ukrainian Jewish immigrant parents, led a life marked by early trauma, political engagement, and profound artistic evolution. While no formal psychiatric evaluation of Guston exists in the public record—art historians and critics have instead offered psychological interpretations of his work and biography—themes of anxiety, guilt, existential dread, and self-confrontation recur throughout his oeuvre. These can be understood through lenses like trauma response, repressed impulses, and the artist's own admissions of inner turmoil.
Early Life and Formative Trauma
Guston experienced significant childhood adversity. His family fled pogroms in Ukraine, settling first in Montreal and then Los Angeles. Economic hardship plagued them; his father, unable to provide adequately, died by suicide when Guston was young (around 10–11 years old). Guston discovered the body, a deeply scarring event. He retreated into drawing as a coping mechanism, often isolating himself in a closet lit by a single bulb—a motif that would later appear symbolically in his paintings (e.g., dangling light bulbs representing illumination amid darkness or vulnerability).
This early loss likely contributed to themes of depression, alienation, and moral anguish in his work. Biographers note Guston's lifelong struggles with self-doubt and periods of creative blockage, echoing depressive cycles. His shift from social realist murals in the 1930s—depicting anti-fascist and anti-racist themes, including early Ku Klux Klan figures as villains—to abstraction in the 1950s may reflect a desire to escape direct confrontation with personal and societal pain.
Guston's abstract expressionist works from the 1950s–1960s are characterized by lyrical, gestural forms that some interpreters see as masking underlying tension:
The Pivotal Shift: Anxiety and Return to Figuration
By the late 1960s, amid the Vietnam War, civil rights struggles, and personal crises (including marital strains and creative frustration), Guston abandoned abstraction. He famously declared abstract art a "lie" and "sham," a "cover-up for poverty of spirit" and fear of self-revelation. This shift—often described as a psychological breakthrough—stemmed from impatience with abstraction's detachment: "What kind of man am I... going into a frustrated fury about everything—and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?"
Psychologically, this can be viewed as rejecting repression in favor of confronting the unconscious. Guston's late works feature cartoonish, autobiographical elements: bulbous heads (often self-portraits), cigarettes (reflecting his heavy smoking and addiction struggles), piled limbs, and everyday "crapola" (clocks, shoes, bottles) symbolizing existential banality and compulsion.
His self-portraits are particularly introspective, depicting the artist as vulnerable, burdened, or absurd—suggesting themes of narcissism, guilt, and self-loathing mingled with humor.
The Klan Imagery: Confronting Evil and Complicity
The most psychologically charged element is Guston's recurring hooded Klansmen, originating in his 1930s anti-racism works but resurfacing in the late period as banal, everyday figures smoking, driving, or sewing hoods. Interpreters see this as exploring the "banality of evil" (echoing Hannah Arendt), personal complicity in societal ills, and repressed aggression. As a Jewish artist who changed his name to assimilate, Guston implicated himself in whiteness and passivity.
These images blend satire, horror, and self-accusation, potentially reflecting projected guilt or anxiety about impotence against injustice. Critics have noted their dreamlike, compulsive quality—repetitive motifs suggesting obsessive rumination.
Overall Psychological Profile
From available biographical and critical sources, Guston emerges as an artist driven by unresolved trauma, moral sensitivity, and a need for authenticity. His work oscillates between evasion (abstraction) and raw exposure (late figuration), suggesting a personality grappling with anxiety, addiction, and existential questions. He died of a heart attack at 66, amid prolific late productivity—perhaps a final surge against inner "doom."
Artistically, his legacy lies in using painting as psychic excavation: humorous yet harrowing, personal yet universal. As one critic noted, his late works embody "moral anguish" and the "human condition," turning private torment into profound commentary. This is not a clinical diagnosis but an interpretive synthesis grounded in Guston's own words and the recurring motifs of his art.
1954-1955 Beggar's Joys
2008 SOLD for $ 10.2M by Sotheby's
Early and late in his career, the paintings by Philip Guston express his horror of racism and anti-Semitism. He is influenced by the social muralism of Siqueiros.
The 1950s constitute his intermediate period, which he will disown. Abstract expressionism and action painting attempt to resurface the basic sensations of human beings. Painting is an illusion that Guston then wants to use for releasing his perception of the atmosphere. The title of the work guides the visitor.
The color is applied in blocks which become lighter as we move away from the center. This centrifugal composition anticipates and perhaps even inspires the Parisian angers of Joan Mitchell.
That abstract expressionism in bolder colors by Philip Guston is beginning in 1955. A precursor in style had been Beggar's Joys, painted in 1954-1955 to narrate the extreme poverty of the artist, sold for $ 10.2M by Sotheby's on November 11, 2008, lot 30.
Philip Guston painted Beggar's Joys (1954–1955), The Visit (1955), and The Street (1956) during his peak Abstract Expressionist period, often called his "Abstract Impressionist" phase. These large-scale oil on canvas works feature delicate, gestural brushstrokes that build shimmering, floating fields of color, evoking luminosity and emotional depth rather than aggressive action painting seen in peers like Pollock or de Kooning.
Common Traits
All three paintings share:
Beggar's Joys (1954–1955)
This canvas measures approximately 71 x 68 inches. It features a central cluster of short, feathery, chubby-like brushstrokes in a soft palette of pinks, reds, blues, and whites, creating a contained explosion of disintegrating yet cohesive form. The composition shimmers with refined clarity and internal energy, reflecting Guston's personal struggle—titled amid financial hardship, it captures the "beggar's" exaltation in paint's hedonistic joy. Critics praise it as an apex of his abstraction, with delicate overlapping strokes evoking soulful, luminous beauty.
The 1950s constitute his intermediate period, which he will disown. Abstract expressionism and action painting attempt to resurface the basic sensations of human beings. Painting is an illusion that Guston then wants to use for releasing his perception of the atmosphere. The title of the work guides the visitor.
The color is applied in blocks which become lighter as we move away from the center. This centrifugal composition anticipates and perhaps even inspires the Parisian angers of Joan Mitchell.
That abstract expressionism in bolder colors by Philip Guston is beginning in 1955. A precursor in style had been Beggar's Joys, painted in 1954-1955 to narrate the extreme poverty of the artist, sold for $ 10.2M by Sotheby's on November 11, 2008, lot 30.
Philip Guston painted Beggar's Joys (1954–1955), The Visit (1955), and The Street (1956) during his peak Abstract Expressionist period, often called his "Abstract Impressionist" phase. These large-scale oil on canvas works feature delicate, gestural brushstrokes that build shimmering, floating fields of color, evoking luminosity and emotional depth rather than aggressive action painting seen in peers like Pollock or de Kooning.
Common Traits
All three paintings share:
- Slow, deliberate layering of strokes with quivering edges
- Intermingling colors
- A sense of evolving forms
- Subtle suggestions of figuration emerging from abstraction
- Influences from Impressionism (e.g., Monet's atmospheric effects) but focused on pure painterly process
Beggar's Joys (1954–1955)
This canvas measures approximately 71 x 68 inches. It features a central cluster of short, feathery, chubby-like brushstrokes in a soft palette of pinks, reds, blues, and whites, creating a contained explosion of disintegrating yet cohesive form. The composition shimmers with refined clarity and internal energy, reflecting Guston's personal struggle—titled amid financial hardship, it captures the "beggar's" exaltation in paint's hedonistic joy. Critics praise it as an apex of his abstraction, with delicate overlapping strokes evoking soulful, luminous beauty.
1955 The Visit
2017 SOLD for $ 8.4M by Sotheby's
Painted by Guston in 1955 in the same style as Beggar's Joy, The Visit displays a bold chromatic palette in a quest for color harmony around a collision of red, pink and lavender.
This oil on canvas 174 x 150 cm was sold for $ 8.4M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Sotheby's on November 16, 2017, lot 39.
The Street is based on an impastoed struggle between reds, pinks and grays. This oil on canvas 193 x 182 cm painted in 1956 was sold for $ 7.3M by Christie's on May 11, 2005, lot 31.
In the next year, Guston's palette becomes unexpectedly darker.
The Visit (1955)
This bold work stands out with a vibrant chromatic palette dominated by rich reds (Guston loved cadmium red medium), alongside pinks, whites, and accents of blue/black. The strokes appear more energetic and textured, forming a dense, floating mass that suggests interaction or "visit"—perhaps subtle figurative hints like grouped forms. Exhibited in MoMA's influential Twelve Americans (1956) alongside other key Gustons, it represents superlative boldness and rarity from his 1955 output.
The Street (1956)
This canvas measures about 76 x 71 inches. It shows a transition with denser, more clotted strokes in a palette shifting toward heavier masses (though still luminous), including reds, pinks, grays, and darker tones. The composition evokes a trembling intermingling of colors, with forms pushing edge-to-edge in a deliberate, possessing manner. As one of Guston's final major abstractions in this style, it hints at the congealing brushwork and somber tones that would dominate by late 1956, bridging to his later crises.
Key Differences and Evolution
This oil on canvas 174 x 150 cm was sold for $ 8.4M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Sotheby's on November 16, 2017, lot 39.
The Street is based on an impastoed struggle between reds, pinks and grays. This oil on canvas 193 x 182 cm painted in 1956 was sold for $ 7.3M by Christie's on May 11, 2005, lot 31.
In the next year, Guston's palette becomes unexpectedly darker.
The Visit (1955)
This bold work stands out with a vibrant chromatic palette dominated by rich reds (Guston loved cadmium red medium), alongside pinks, whites, and accents of blue/black. The strokes appear more energetic and textured, forming a dense, floating mass that suggests interaction or "visit"—perhaps subtle figurative hints like grouped forms. Exhibited in MoMA's influential Twelve Americans (1956) alongside other key Gustons, it represents superlative boldness and rarity from his 1955 output.
The Street (1956)
This canvas measures about 76 x 71 inches. It shows a transition with denser, more clotted strokes in a palette shifting toward heavier masses (though still luminous), including reds, pinks, grays, and darker tones. The composition evokes a trembling intermingling of colors, with forms pushing edge-to-edge in a deliberate, possessing manner. As one of Guston's final major abstractions in this style, it hints at the congealing brushwork and somber tones that would dominate by late 1956, bridging to his later crises.
Key Differences and Evolution
- Palette and Energy: Beggar's Joys is softer and more contemplative; The Visit is the most vivid and bold; The Street begins to densify and darken, signaling Guston's growing dissatisfaction with pure abstraction.
- Composition: All center on clustered strokes, but progression moves from shimmering clarity (1954–55) to bolder texture (1955) to heavier, pregnant forms (1956).
- Chronological Shift: These works trace Guston's mid-1950s peak toward burnout, culminating in his radical return to figuration in the late 1960s.
1958 To Fellini
2013 SOLD for $ 26M by Christie's
Early and late in his career, the paintings by Philip Guston express his horror of racism and anti-Semitism. He is influenced by the social muralism of Siqueiros.
The 1950s constitute his intermediate period, which he will disown. Abstract expressionism and action painting attempt to resurface the basic sensations of human beings. Painting is an illusion that Guston then wants to use for releasing his perception of the atmosphere. The title of the work guides the visitor.
The color is applied in blocks which become lighter as we move away from the center. This centrifugal composition anticipates and perhaps even inspires the Parisian angers of Joan Mitchell.
That abstract expressionism in bolder colors by Philip Guston is beginning in 1956. A precursor in style had been Beggar's Joys, painted in 1954-1955 to narrate the extreme poverty of the artist, sold for $ 10.2M by Sotheby's on November 11, 2008, lot 30.
Other forms of art are also mere illusions, such as the projection of light filtered by a film onto a cinema screen. To Fellini was sold by Christie's on May 15, 2013 for $ 26M from a lower estimate of $ 8M, lot 23. This 175 x 188 cm oil on canvas painted in 1958 invites a comparison between both techniques.
Compare To Fellini (1958, sold by Christie's on May 15, 2013, lot 23, and the triplet of works discussed above from 1954-1956. .
Philip Guston's To Fellini (1958, oil on canvas, 69 x 74 in., sold at Christie's for $25.88 million in 2013) marks the culmination of his mature Abstract Expressionist phase, while Beggar's Joys (1954–1955), The Visit (1955), and The Street (1956) represent the luminous, contemplative peak of his mid-1950s abstraction. All four are large-scale works built from layered, gestural brushstrokes that coalesce into central, floating masses, evoking emotional resonance through pure painterly means rather than overt narrative.
Shared Characteristics
These paintings share:
The Mid-1950s Triplet (1954–1956)
Beggar's Joys features a soft, shimmering cluster of feathery strokes in pinks, reds, blues, and whites, creating a contained, luminous explosion of contemplative beauty amid personal hardship (titled for the "joys" found in painting despite financial struggles).
The Visit stands out with bolder, more vibrant reds (Guston's beloved cadmium red medium), textured energy, and subtle hints of interaction in the dense mass—exhibited in MoMA's landmark Twelve Americans (1956).
The Street shows denser, clotted strokes with emerging grays and darker tones, evoking urban tremor while bridging toward heavier forms.These works trace Guston's mid-decade zenith: from refined clarity and delicacy to increasing boldness and density, signaling growing restlessness with pure abstraction.
The 1958 Pair: To Fellini and Nile
Both paintings represent the culmination—and edge of crisis—in Guston's abstraction, with thicker, clotted brushwork applied close to the canvas, eliminating spatial depth for interlocking, totemic forms. They are closely related within Guston's late-1950s "second cycle" (post-Dial, 1956), marked by broader, more confident marks and brooding mood, pushing pure abstraction to its perceptual limits.
Critics describe it as a "totemic masterpiece," with broader, more confident strokes and a sense of formal intrigue pushing abstraction to its limits. By 1958, Guston's works (including contemporaries like Dial 1956 and Nile 1958) abandon spatial depth entirely, working close to the canvas for interlocking forms in bolder color and black.
The title To Fellini is a direct homage to Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, whose surreal, dreamlike explorations of perception deeply resonated with Guston. A Fellini quote—"objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I perceived was perception itself"—is often linked to the painting's enigmatic, dissolving forms, evoking a theatrical ambiguity akin to Fellini's films (e.g., La Dolce Vita, 1960, though earlier works like La Strada, 1954, influenced mid-century artists).
Nile, while evocative of ancient mystery or flowing forms, carries no explicit cinematic reference; it aligns more with Guston's poetic, geographic titles of the period. The movie allusion appears unique to To Fellini among these works, reflecting Guston's broadening cultural inspirations as his abstraction reached expressive saturation.
The assumption that Philip Guston's 1958 painting Nile references the biblical plague scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film The Ten Commandments—where Moses turns the Nile River to blood—appears in limited art commentary as a speculative interpretation. This belief is tied to Guston's known passion for cinema (as seen in the contemporaneous title To Fellini, an explicit homage to filmmaker Federico Fellini) and his status as an avid moviegoer, potentially drawing from the film's dramatic, Technicolor depiction of the event to evoke the painting's clustered red strokes amid other colors like green, black, ochre, blue, and pink, which could symbolically suggest flowing or bloodied waters. However, this connection is not widely corroborated or discussed in major scholarly sources, auction catalog descriptions (e.g., from Sotheby's, where the work sold for $18 million in 2022), or official Guston chronologies and exhibitions, which treat the title as more abstract or poetic without assigning specific narrative origins. Guston's Jewish heritage and early interest in social themes (including anti-Semitism and historical injustices) might lend indirect plausibility to a biblical undertone, but the film's influence remains unconfirmed and interpretive rather than documented intent.
These five masterpieces highlight Guston's lyrical distinction within Abstract Expressionism, evolving from hedonistic immersion in paint to profound existential questioning.
The 1950s constitute his intermediate period, which he will disown. Abstract expressionism and action painting attempt to resurface the basic sensations of human beings. Painting is an illusion that Guston then wants to use for releasing his perception of the atmosphere. The title of the work guides the visitor.
The color is applied in blocks which become lighter as we move away from the center. This centrifugal composition anticipates and perhaps even inspires the Parisian angers of Joan Mitchell.
That abstract expressionism in bolder colors by Philip Guston is beginning in 1956. A precursor in style had been Beggar's Joys, painted in 1954-1955 to narrate the extreme poverty of the artist, sold for $ 10.2M by Sotheby's on November 11, 2008, lot 30.
Other forms of art are also mere illusions, such as the projection of light filtered by a film onto a cinema screen. To Fellini was sold by Christie's on May 15, 2013 for $ 26M from a lower estimate of $ 8M, lot 23. This 175 x 188 cm oil on canvas painted in 1958 invites a comparison between both techniques.
Compare To Fellini (1958, sold by Christie's on May 15, 2013, lot 23, and the triplet of works discussed above from 1954-1956. .
Philip Guston's To Fellini (1958, oil on canvas, 69 x 74 in., sold at Christie's for $25.88 million in 2013) marks the culmination of his mature Abstract Expressionist phase, while Beggar's Joys (1954–1955), The Visit (1955), and The Street (1956) represent the luminous, contemplative peak of his mid-1950s abstraction. All four are large-scale works built from layered, gestural brushstrokes that coalesce into central, floating masses, evoking emotional resonance through pure painterly means rather than overt narrative.
Shared Characteristics
These paintings share:
- Delicate, quivering touches
- Subtle suggestions of emergent forms dissolving back into abstraction
- A lyrical, introspective quality distinct from the more aggressive action painting of peers like Pollock or de Kooning
The Mid-1950s Triplet (1954–1956)
Beggar's Joys features a soft, shimmering cluster of feathery strokes in pinks, reds, blues, and whites, creating a contained, luminous explosion of contemplative beauty amid personal hardship (titled for the "joys" found in painting despite financial struggles).
The Visit stands out with bolder, more vibrant reds (Guston's beloved cadmium red medium), textured energy, and subtle hints of interaction in the dense mass—exhibited in MoMA's landmark Twelve Americans (1956).
The Street shows denser, clotted strokes with emerging grays and darker tones, evoking urban tremor while bridging toward heavier forms.These works trace Guston's mid-decade zenith: from refined clarity and delicacy to increasing boldness and density, signaling growing restlessness with pure abstraction.
The 1958 Pair: To Fellini and Nile
Both paintings represent the culmination—and edge of crisis—in Guston's abstraction, with thicker, clotted brushwork applied close to the canvas, eliminating spatial depth for interlocking, totemic forms. They are closely related within Guston's late-1950s "second cycle" (post-Dial, 1956), marked by broader, more confident marks and brooding mood, pushing pure abstraction to its perceptual limits.
- To Fellini (1958)
Critics describe it as a "totemic masterpiece," with broader, more confident strokes and a sense of formal intrigue pushing abstraction to its limits. By 1958, Guston's works (including contemporaries like Dial 1956 and Nile 1958) abandon spatial depth entirely, working close to the canvas for interlocking forms in bolder color and black.
- Nile (approx. 65 x 75 in.) employs condensed clusters of green, red, black, ochre, blue, and pink strokes gathering toward the center, with intense painterly intimacy and compositional sensitivity; it stands as a landmark of post-war abstraction's evolution.
- Brushwork and Texture — The 1954–1956 paintings use short, delicate, overlapping strokes for shimmering luminosity; To Fellini employs thicker, clotted, medium-size marks for denser, more material presence.
- Palette and Mood — Mid-1950s works favor soft pinks/reds with contemplative glow; 1958 introduces wider colors (violets, greens, heavier blacks) for brooding intensity.
- Composition and Implication — Earlier works center floating, disintegrating clusters; To Fellini fills the canvas with pregnant, appearing/disappearing forms, hinting at Guston's impending crisis of abstraction (leading to his 1960s doubts and 1970s figuration return).
- Chronological Shift — The triplet captures peak lyrical abstraction (1954–1956); To Fellini is the "culmination," marking burnout's edge before strokes congeal further.
The title To Fellini is a direct homage to Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, whose surreal, dreamlike explorations of perception deeply resonated with Guston. A Fellini quote—"objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I perceived was perception itself"—is often linked to the painting's enigmatic, dissolving forms, evoking a theatrical ambiguity akin to Fellini's films (e.g., La Dolce Vita, 1960, though earlier works like La Strada, 1954, influenced mid-century artists).
Nile, while evocative of ancient mystery or flowing forms, carries no explicit cinematic reference; it aligns more with Guston's poetic, geographic titles of the period. The movie allusion appears unique to To Fellini among these works, reflecting Guston's broadening cultural inspirations as his abstraction reached expressive saturation.
The assumption that Philip Guston's 1958 painting Nile references the biblical plague scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film The Ten Commandments—where Moses turns the Nile River to blood—appears in limited art commentary as a speculative interpretation. This belief is tied to Guston's known passion for cinema (as seen in the contemporaneous title To Fellini, an explicit homage to filmmaker Federico Fellini) and his status as an avid moviegoer, potentially drawing from the film's dramatic, Technicolor depiction of the event to evoke the painting's clustered red strokes amid other colors like green, black, ochre, blue, and pink, which could symbolically suggest flowing or bloodied waters. However, this connection is not widely corroborated or discussed in major scholarly sources, auction catalog descriptions (e.g., from Sotheby's, where the work sold for $18 million in 2022), or official Guston chronologies and exhibitions, which treat the title as more abstract or poetic without assigning specific narrative origins. Guston's Jewish heritage and early interest in social themes (including anti-Semitism and historical injustices) might lend indirect plausibility to a biblical undertone, but the film's influence remains unconfirmed and interpretive rather than documented intent.
These five masterpieces highlight Guston's lyrical distinction within Abstract Expressionism, evolving from hedonistic immersion in paint to profound existential questioning.
1958 Nile
2022 SOLD for $ 18M by Sotheby's
Another opus is Nile, oil on canvas 165 x 190 cm also painted in 1958. It was sold for $ 18M by Sotheby's on May 17, 2022, lot 15, to benefit the O’Donnell philanthropic foundation.
Nile is a fair example of the abstract technique of the artist, who increased the emotional intensity by working in a very close proximity to the picture plane thereby removing the notion of space. Guston was an avid movie goer.
Shortly after, Guston returns to a caricatural figuration, often with self-derision. The Ku Klux Klan is his target, but the public does not perceive the subversive message hidden behind his mockery hoods that are not threatening. A major exhibition was canceled in 2020 : the organizers were unable to disentangle the ambiguities of this artist who might have been a major precursor to street art.
Nile is a fair example of the abstract technique of the artist, who increased the emotional intensity by working in a very close proximity to the picture plane thereby removing the notion of space. Guston was an avid movie goer.
Shortly after, Guston returns to a caricatural figuration, often with self-derision. The Ku Klux Klan is his target, but the public does not perceive the subversive message hidden behind his mockery hoods that are not threatening. A major exhibition was canceled in 2020 : the organizers were unable to disentangle the ambiguities of this artist who might have been a major precursor to street art.
1970 Bricks
2023 SOLD for $ 7.3M by Christie's
After a three years hiatus in his artistic career, Philip Guston left forever in 1968 the abstract expressionism for displaying his anguished view of the brutal modern world. He left New York City at the same time.
A world that did not eradicate the Ku Klux Klan is full of many threats including the horrible wars of the 20th century accompanied by dictatorships and unrest. He paints cartoonish forms in a reduced palette of pastel hues.
Executed in 1970, Bricks is one of the earliest paintings to stage a Klan's pointed hood as a stand alone character. Set on a chair, the hood is watching a flight of bricks in the sky, of which it is hurling another element with its left hand. The target is out of field.
This oil on canvas 83 x 194 cm was sold for $ 7.3M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Christie's on May 11, 2023, lot 25A.
A world that did not eradicate the Ku Klux Klan is full of many threats including the horrible wars of the 20th century accompanied by dictatorships and unrest. He paints cartoonish forms in a reduced palette of pastel hues.
Executed in 1970, Bricks is one of the earliest paintings to stage a Klan's pointed hood as a stand alone character. Set on a chair, the hood is watching a flight of bricks in the sky, of which it is hurling another element with its left hand. The target is out of field.
This oil on canvas 83 x 194 cm was sold for $ 7.3M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Christie's on May 11, 2023, lot 25A.
1972 Ominous Land
2021 SOLD for $ 9.5M by Sotheby's
Ominous Land, painted in 1972, gathers three of Guston's recurring symbols in fleshy pink, mauve, red and orange. The radiant sun cannot be joyous when it falls on a devastation, symbolized by an entanglement of human legs and shoe soles. This stack is observed by a typical hood of the Klan. The title is significant. This oil on canvas 183 x 206 cm was sold for $ 9.5M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Sotheby's on November 18, 2021, lot 105.
After that political phase, Guston turns his frustrated fury onto his own self. An artist is an abject hopeless creature that desperately paints, eats and smokes, and that's it. His symbols now include a square canvas painted in a fleshy monochrome pink with the only figure of a mystic eye of God in a bushy brow. The canvas is fitted on a metal box of same size closed by a row of nails.
A painting titled The Canvas features that weird one eyed object leaning onto his signature brick wall with nothing else to counter the closed nightmare. This oil on canvas 170 x 200 cm painted in 1973 was sold for for £ 3.1M by Sotheby's on October 12, 2023, lot 114.
After that political phase, Guston turns his frustrated fury onto his own self. An artist is an abject hopeless creature that desperately paints, eats and smokes, and that's it. His symbols now include a square canvas painted in a fleshy monochrome pink with the only figure of a mystic eye of God in a bushy brow. The canvas is fitted on a metal box of same size closed by a row of nails.
A painting titled The Canvas features that weird one eyed object leaning onto his signature brick wall with nothing else to counter the closed nightmare. This oil on canvas 170 x 200 cm painted in 1973 was sold for for £ 3.1M by Sotheby's on October 12, 2023, lot 114.
1973 Smoking
2019 SOLD for $ 7.7M by Phillips
Philip Guston was a night and day chain smoker, going straight to his own death, vainly opposing his own disillusions in an insomniac delirium.
In 1973 he begins a desperate series about Smoking, displaying himself burying in his bed at bust length with a lighted cigarette raised in his mouth. In the first opus, nearly monochromatic oil on canvas 134 x 137 cm kept at the Met Museum, some details define the head : forehead wrinkles, shaped hair around the ears and the huge empty eye.
In the same year, the second opus is still worse with the head figuration reduced to a stupid bean centered by the empty eye. The window behind the head is now a chimney that could capture the smoke of the cigarette, as evidenced by the fire poker behind it. A pale palette is back.
Smoking II, oil on canvas 100 x 170 cm, was sold for $ 7.7M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Phillips on November 14, 2019, lot 11.
In 1973 he begins a desperate series about Smoking, displaying himself burying in his bed at bust length with a lighted cigarette raised in his mouth. In the first opus, nearly monochromatic oil on canvas 134 x 137 cm kept at the Met Museum, some details define the head : forehead wrinkles, shaped hair around the ears and the huge empty eye.
In the same year, the second opus is still worse with the head figuration reduced to a stupid bean centered by the empty eye. The window behind the head is now a chimney that could capture the smoke of the cigarette, as evidenced by the fire poker behind it. A pale palette is back.
Smoking II, oil on canvas 100 x 170 cm, was sold for $ 7.7M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Phillips on November 14, 2019, lot 11.
masterpiece
1976 Monument
Tate Gallery
Monument, painted in 1976 by Philip Guston, displays an architecture made of a stack of bare legs and overturned shoes viewed from the sole. The legs are perpendicularly bent at the knee and all other parts of corpses are missing.
The whole is reminding bones in an ossuary. Guston, who was a son of Russian Jews and had a social sensitivity, had such a lasting nightmare as a reminiscence of the concentration camps.
The whole is reminding bones in an ossuary. Guston, who was a son of Russian Jews and had a social sensitivity, had such a lasting nightmare as a reminiscence of the concentration camps.
1976 Strong Light
2021 SOLD for $ 24.4M by Sotheby's
In his later career, an embittered Philip Guston was displaying his anguished view of the modern world.
A world that did not eradicate the Ku Klux Klan is full of many threats including the horrible wars of the 20th century accompanied by dictatorships and unrest. He paints cartoonish forms in a reduced palette of bright colors. The scenery may be lit by day by a full sun or by night by a huge bare electric bulb.
Strong light, painted in 1976, has the radiant bulb and the black background. Three elongated tightly knit human legs probably from dead humans mingle with five shoe soles on a carpet posed on a parqueted wood. This simplified composition does not include other symbols of the continuous social revolt of the artist.
This oil on canvas 204 x 175 cm was sold for $ 24.4M from a lower estimate of $ 8M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2021, lot 8.
In 1978 with Steppes, their unlimited and dense row beside a bleak wall is another reminder of the camps. By homophony with steps, Steppes is altogether referring to a place for Soviet camps, to the horror scene of the Potemkin and to the normal use of legs and shoes. Steppes, oil on canvas 173 x 223 cm, was sold for $ 6.7M by Christie's on May 16, 2024, lot 43 B.
Also painted in 1978, Red Sky features a row of soles without their associated legs, kept in boxes. This oil on canvas 210 x 270 cm was sold for $ 7.3M by Sotheby's on May 16, 2019, lot 24.
A world that did not eradicate the Ku Klux Klan is full of many threats including the horrible wars of the 20th century accompanied by dictatorships and unrest. He paints cartoonish forms in a reduced palette of bright colors. The scenery may be lit by day by a full sun or by night by a huge bare electric bulb.
Strong light, painted in 1976, has the radiant bulb and the black background. Three elongated tightly knit human legs probably from dead humans mingle with five shoe soles on a carpet posed on a parqueted wood. This simplified composition does not include other symbols of the continuous social revolt of the artist.
This oil on canvas 204 x 175 cm was sold for $ 24.4M from a lower estimate of $ 8M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2021, lot 8.
In 1978 with Steppes, their unlimited and dense row beside a bleak wall is another reminder of the camps. By homophony with steps, Steppes is altogether referring to a place for Soviet camps, to the horror scene of the Potemkin and to the normal use of legs and shoes. Steppes, oil on canvas 173 x 223 cm, was sold for $ 6.7M by Christie's on May 16, 2024, lot 43 B.
Also painted in 1978, Red Sky features a row of soles without their associated legs, kept in boxes. This oil on canvas 210 x 270 cm was sold for $ 7.3M by Sotheby's on May 16, 2019, lot 24.
1976 Chair
2023 SOLD for $ 9.6M by Christie's
Chair, oil on canvas 173 x 205 cm painted by Guston in 1976, also gathers several symbols of the nightmare of the artist. It was sold for $ 9.6M by Christie's on May 11, 2023, lot 22A.
A tangle of bare hairy legs raised from the ground is representing the doomed mankind. All are bent at the knee with no foot visible, either cut off off or hidden behind an accumulation of overturned nailed soles. A sole is laid on a chair viewed from profile.
The window is walled with bricks, obstructing the access to the world. The ring to pull the window is an oversized pendulum which expresses the inexorable run of time. Its rope is a reminder of the suicide of the artist's father half a century earlier
The rich surface in soft rose and pale gray of the wall of that bleak room may be a reminiscence from the abstract period of the artist two decades earlier.
A tangle of bare hairy legs raised from the ground is representing the doomed mankind. All are bent at the knee with no foot visible, either cut off off or hidden behind an accumulation of overturned nailed soles. A sole is laid on a chair viewed from profile.
The window is walled with bricks, obstructing the access to the world. The ring to pull the window is an oversized pendulum which expresses the inexorable run of time. Its rope is a reminder of the suicide of the artist's father half a century earlier
The rich surface in soft rose and pale gray of the wall of that bleak room may be a reminiscence from the abstract period of the artist two decades earlier.
1979 Painter at Night
2017 SOLD for $ 12.6M by Christie's
Philip Guston had been one of the best painters of the abstract expressionism, displaying explosions of colors from the center of his canvases.
He is however tormented by the question of the role of art. When he moves to Woodstock NY in 1967 he completely changes his approach to the detriment of his own career.
He no longer understands what is the purpose of juxtaposing bright colors. He will now show ordinary objects of his time in a drawing imitating cartoons with poor or lugubrious colors.
Painter at night, oil on canvas 172 x 203 cm painted in 1979, was sold for $ 12.6M from a lower estimate of $ 8M by Christie's on May 17, 2017, lot 11 B. This artwork bearing symbols from his whole life appears as his artistic testament. Did this chain smoker feel that his health was threatened ? He died in the next year of a heart attack.
The unshaved artist with dirty hair turns his back on the viewer. In his dignity as a creator, he is not embarrassed to look like a tramp. He holds his brush and looks at the smoke of his cigarette. The scene is barely lit by a small lamp that symbolized the suicide of his father in his teenager's drawings. Framed in a television it is only a picture in the picture : once again art did not express a reality.
Misunderstood in his later career, Guston has become the forerunner of a movement which does not yet have a name seeking to express the existentialist difficulty and the brutality of current life.
He is however tormented by the question of the role of art. When he moves to Woodstock NY in 1967 he completely changes his approach to the detriment of his own career.
He no longer understands what is the purpose of juxtaposing bright colors. He will now show ordinary objects of his time in a drawing imitating cartoons with poor or lugubrious colors.
Painter at night, oil on canvas 172 x 203 cm painted in 1979, was sold for $ 12.6M from a lower estimate of $ 8M by Christie's on May 17, 2017, lot 11 B. This artwork bearing symbols from his whole life appears as his artistic testament. Did this chain smoker feel that his health was threatened ? He died in the next year of a heart attack.
The unshaved artist with dirty hair turns his back on the viewer. In his dignity as a creator, he is not embarrassed to look like a tramp. He holds his brush and looks at the smoke of his cigarette. The scene is barely lit by a small lamp that symbolized the suicide of his father in his teenager's drawings. Framed in a television it is only a picture in the picture : once again art did not express a reality.
Misunderstood in his later career, Guston has become the forerunner of a movement which does not yet have a name seeking to express the existentialist difficulty and the brutality of current life.
