Philip Guston (1913-1980), a Canadian-American artist whose artistic career has gone from figurative to abstract and finally back to figuration, was an abstract expressionist artist like Pollock, and finally found his own style in unique paintings with cartoonish colors, and sensitive abstraction was replaced by cartoonish canvases. Due to the pandemic and the controversy over racism, the exhibition "Philip Gaston: Now", co-organized by four art galleries in the UK and the US, was postponed for two years. Today, the exhibition "Philip Gaston" first opens at the Boston Art Gallery. Compared with the current discussion of racism faced by artists, many critics believe that the controversy revolves more around how the museum itself will meet the challenge.
In the summer of 2020, Kaywin Feldman was uneasy while examining the layout of an upcoming philip Guston exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in her second year as director. Exploring racism in his mysterious and politically charged work, how do his hooded cartoon Ku Klux Klan (three civil society groups in American history that practiced white supremacist movements and Christian terrorism) confront audiences who have just been distressed and injusticed by the death of George Floyd?
Painting, Smoking, Eating, Philip Gaston, 1973
At the time, there were no black curators on the museum staff. Feldman asked the museum staff, including Catholic and security personnel, to hear their thoughts. She expressed her unease to her colleagues at three other museums that collaborated on the Gaston exhibition, and they raised the same concerns. When Feldman told the board that the directors of the four galleries agreed that the exhibition should be postponed, she mentioned the words of a black colleague who impressed her: "Watching more Ku Klux Klan images is like adding another wound to my arm and sprinkling salt on it." I'm willing to do that, but it needs a fuller reason. ”
Black Sea, Philip Gaston, 1977
Museums that have collaborated on the Guston exhibition include the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which announced in September 2020 that they would postpone the exhibition until 2024 for reconsideration, sparking a storm. Hundreds of prominent artists signed an open letter claiming that the institutions were "afraid of controversy" and "lacked confidence in the intelligence of their audiences."
The Web, Philip Gaston, 1975
The postponement was shortened due to the protests of the people. On May 1 this year, the exhibition opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Hooded figure paintings are included along with more historical context; a trauma specialist provides a "mood preparation" pamphlet urging visitors to "recognize their boundaries and take care of themselves"; and there is a detour that allows viewers to bypass the Ku Klux Klux Klan-themed work. The opening ceremony sparked a heated debate about whether the postponement of the exhibition was a troubling sign of museums choosing to shy away from challenging and inflammatory work in a highly sensitive era, or a sign of health that after a long period of failure to diversify staff, projects, and audiences, they were finally beginning to face the changing demands head-on.
"I really don't understand why, after the climax of the 'Black Lives Matters' movement, art institutions chose not to exhibit works that respond forcefully and directly to racism," said Danny Simmons, an artist and collector who also signed the protest letter. ”
Darren Walker, chairman of the Ford Foundation who donated $1 million to the exhibition and a board member of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., supported the extension, noting that the incident exposed "how inadequate the art museums that exhibit these sensitive issues are dealing with issues, and we need to change that." "In the future, when museums are going to curate such exhibitions, they'll need to consult people of color," Walker said, "and you're not asking for their consent or asking them about their profession, you're just resonating with those who are going to be affected." ”
Tower, Philip Gaston, 1970
Several museum directors who participated in "Philip Guston Now" said critics ignored the intention of the extension: to ensure that the Gaston exhibition was more fully responsive to the present. "We never thought about canceling or censoring, and we really didn't," said Gary Tinterow, director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, "but it's also inevitable that the conversation about his work has changed." The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, director of the Boston Museum, pointed out, "It's not about Gaston's acceptance, it's about the museum's leadership." ”
Head I, Philip Gaston, 1965
Even so, critics question whether the nearly two-year extension is necessary and to what extent it has changed today.
"I would like to point out that Tate's plan has given a detailed background to Gaston's early Ku Klux Klan paintings," said Mark Godfrey, who was originally the exhibition's curator at Tate Modern, who later denounced the exhibition's postponement on Instagram and was suspended. Godfrey said Tate's curatorial team has consulted with African-American, Asian-American and minority organizations in the museum and plans to design an antechamber before the hood painting that provides context on American history and Gaston's life and artistic career, highlighting racial persecution.
Gaston's daughter, Musa Mayer, who has been sharply critical of the decision to postpone the exhibition, said she realized that the controversy was not so much a reflection of her father's work as it exposed the challenges facing the museum. "It's more of a problem for the institutions themselves," she said bluntly in an interview, "given all the demonstrations and petitions that have erupted over dissatisfaction with art galleries in the United States, art museums are considered fragile." ”
Born in 1913 to a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Montreal, Canada, Gaston moved with his family to California in 1919. In 1930, Gaston studied briefly at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, without any formal training in painting. In 1935, Gaston left Los Angeles for New York, where he was supported by the Works Progress Administration, where he was able to create large murals under the Federal Art Project.
Philip Gaston in his studio, 1970
In the 1940s, after nearly a decade of figurative work, Gaston began to turn to the abstract style. His studio on 10th Street is next door to Pollock, de Kooning, Kline and Rothko. In the 1950s, with his bold, polished brushstrokes and gestures, Gaston became a leading figure in American avant-garde Abstract Expressionist painting. Then, in 1962, after a large retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Gaston grew weary of pure abstraction and began to explore more concrete shapes. By the 1960s, Gaston was working on the themes of a hooded Ku Klux Klan, a dismembered body, and a scene from his own studio. The withdrawal from the abstraction once made him heavily criticized, and the master's fearless experimentation and unique aesthetic revolution eventually won him the recognition of the world. His work has been exhibited in Various Cities including New York, London, Basel, Amsterdam, and is housed in international institutions such as the Museum of Art Chicago, the Pompidou Center for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Untitled, Philip Gaston, 1980
The Boston Art Gallery exhibits 73 paintings and 27 drawings, a tiny fraction of the scale of the exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., which plans to feature 250 Gaston's works in two associated exhibitions. From left-wing realist artists to aesthetically conscious abstract expressionist artists, to the reappearance of the 1960s as a black humor and erudite visual genius, the exhibition will completely present the changes of the artist over the decades. His work is ambiguous, always associated with identity and death, social justice, which today have become his hallmark achievements.
Gladiators (1940)
Notable works on display include Gladiators (1940), figurative paintings depicting children fighting, and Red Painting (1950), an abstract texture painting 10 years later. The late couple in bed (1977) was written a few years before Gaston's death, and he died in 1980 at the age of 66. In this painting, Gaston paints a double portrait of himself and his wife, who was already weakened at the time, with their faces blurred, embracing each other, like Brancussi's Kiss. By then, Gaston had abandoned the abstraction of the 1960s in favor of rough, cartoonish images from his memory.
Couple in Bed (1977)
Of the 15 ku Klux Klan-related works originally planned for the Boston Art Gallery, five were withdrawn, including two large-scale paintings from 1970. A spokesperson for the museum claimed the decision was made for "spatial reasons" and a new Ku Klux Klan painting would be on display. In addition, there is a major change: The Studio (1969) is considered a self-portrait of Gaston, showing an artist dressed in a cover cloth depicting a figure draped in a cover cloth. Originally planned to be exhibited with other paintings from the same period, the painting will now appear in the "Chamber of the Chamber" to hint at Gaston's own studio.
The Studio (1969)
Feldman, director of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., chose to take a positive view of the whole thing, arguing that bad public opinion and the ensuing controversy about artists were actually "beneficial." "At the end of the day, it's an art storm that has had little impact on the masses." In her view, it is the public that will make the exhibition "a widespread success in various pavilions."
"Philip Gaston: Now" is on display at the Boston Art Gallery from May 1 to September 11.
(This article is compiled from reports from The New York Times and The Art Newspaper.)