Guston: A Genius Beyond Controversy

There is the option to bypass the Klan pictures altogether, via a specially designed ‘off ramp.’ Don’t take it.

Philip Guston, ‘Web,’ 1975. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Edward R. Broida, 2005. © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Philip Guston was born Philip Goldstein, the son of refugees from Odessa, and died as one of the most original artists of the 20th century. Guston claimed that we are “image-makers and image-ridden.” To spend time with Guston’s own images is to meet an artist who in the wake of the Holocaust and in the midst of the Civil Rights movement found an artistic language for turmoil. 

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