Confrontation

Philip Guston

Montreal, Canada, 1913 - Woodstock, New York, USA, 1980
  • Date: 
    1974
  • Technique: 
    Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 
    191 x 291,5 cm
  • Category: 
    Painting
  • Entry date: 
    1997
  • Register number: 
    AD00371

Starting in the 1970s, Philip Guston made drawing his primary technique, thus giving rise to a new form of “drawn painting.” His works dissolve traditional perspective and figurative systems, while trying to define forms in space, modifying the relationship between the figure and the background. In his later work, Guston approaches a new kind of reading of figuration, a reading distinct from traditional narrative strategies and free of all academicism. In it the feel of an era becomes manifest in aspects taken from Pop Art; an influence that is especially visible in the use of elements of popular culture, such as illustrations or comics, and in its reference to that raw materialism in which objects move to the higher status of subjects. Confrontation thus belongs to a type of composition in which history is narrated through the simplicity and crude nature of the images, with an expressive intention contained in the apparently random association of motifs. Symbols are used in such a way that they allude to questions concerning self-exploration and self-realization; the oeuvre thereby underlines the contrast between intellectual coldness and emotional impetuosity.

Ruth Gallego Fernández

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