“Like many of the Marlborough paintings that summon forth modernist memories, By the Window projects a feeling of remorse, a subject addressed more directly in a painting titled Remorse in which a ghost / hooded artist resembling the one seen ruminating by the window is shown staring at a bare word bubble / lightbulb while a simple white rectangle delimiting a field painting seems to hover like an empty thought over his head on the wall behind him. The word bubble / lightbulb and window / painting serve as blank ciphers of modernist purity, insinuating the cause of the figure’s guilty feelings. A series of concentrically expanding rectangles in the background indicates a door with decorative moldings as well as the recessive space of perspectival illusion or, perhaps, stripe painting by Frank Stella.”
Philip Guston's Remorse boldly exemplifies the daring innovation and radical iconography of the artist's celebrated late corpus of figure paintings. An exceptional early example of this later body of work, Remorse was first exhibited in the 1970 Marlborough Gallery exhibition Philip Guston Recent Paintings, during which Guston first unveiled his now canonical paintings of hooded figures. The corpus of works that Guston presented at the Marlborough Gallery in October of 1970 comprised not only a radical shift within the artist's own artistic career with his groundbreaking return to figuration but also presents undoubtedly one of the most important contributions to Twentieth-Century art. A testament to the caliber of the iconic works included in the Marlborough Gallery exhibition, thirteen of the twenty-eight paintings displayed are held in museum collections. One of this select group, Remorse is a masterpiece that epitomizes the very best of Guston's oeuvre, at a moment where institutional recognition of his work is at an all-time high.
Works from Philip Guston Recent Paintings Held in Museum Collections
On May 1st 2022, the long-awaited retrospective of Philip Guston's work Philip Guston Now will open at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which will highlight in particular the Marlborough Gallery exhibition. This major exhibition which will travel to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and Tate Modern in London is the first retrospective of Guston’s work in nearly 20 years. In Philip Guston's Remorse, a solitary hooded figure, rendered in fleshy pink and red impasto, confronts the viewer with psychic intensity, caught in a fraught state of contemplation and framed only by a single searing light bulb and geometric lines. The present work is of only a few instances in which Guston treated the Klansman-like figure in a vertical, portrait style format, lending a highly impressive and impactful vertiginous-type impression. The rich, fleshy tones densely painted expressionistic brushwork, masterfully composed composition, and prominence afforded to the hooded figure and light bulb distinguish Remorse as one of the most important examples of Guston's later works.
Executed in 1969, Remorse is amongst the earliest iterations of Guston's radical transformation when, after decades of acclaim as a key member of the New York School, the artist abandoned the gestural flourishes of abstracted color and interpretive freedom that had become the hallmarks of his distinctive aesthetic, replacing them with bold, stylistic, and symbolically charged figurative paintings. Repurposing the dynamic brushwork and palette of fleshy pinks and cherry reds that characterized his abstract paintings of the 1950s, the viscerally urgent, impasto brushstrokes of Remorse evoke the charged, tumultuous climate of 1960s America, which Guston anxiously sought to capture in his paintings of this period. The influence of Guston's abstract expressionist technique is particularly apparent in the richly textured blacks. In Remorse, the hooded figure stares ardently at a light bulb, framed by a series of black and white rectangles; the stark lines of the door, window and minimal background allude to modernist tendencies. Guston's light bulb hovering by the head of the hood in a utilitarian manner illuminates the ideas the artist grapples with within this series of Marlborough works, reflecting on his departure from abstraction. Describing the present work, critic Robert Silfkin explains, the “series of concentrically expanding rectangles in the background indicates a door with decorative moldings as well as the recessive space of perspectival illusion or, perhaps, stripe painting by Frank Stella.” (Robert Slifkin, Out of Time: Philip Guston and the Refiguration of Postwar American Art, 2013, p. 128) In Remorse, Guston reflects on modernism, the figure projects a subtle poignancy, as the artist perhaps explores his guilt in rejecting modernist purity. Philip Guston described the narratives of his Marlborough works and, Remorse in particular, saying, "There's a marvelous thing you can do. I think a story is the most marvelous thing in painting. I mean, to have something to paint, to have a story you particularly want to tell… The title of this is Remorse, like sad. They became very real to me. And it was a great pleasure. (Philip Guston quoted in Clark Coolidge, ed., Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations, Berkeley 2011, p157)
“Certainly one of the best-known and most frequently rehearsed episodes from the history of postwar painting is Philip Guston’s notorious “return to figuration,” whose public debut took place in October City.”
One of the most iconic and powerful motifs in Guston's oeuvre, the hooded figure that dominates the composition presents a brilliant fusion of politically charged iconography and satirical self-portraiture, providing Guston with a means to grapple with the fear incited in his surroundings and confront the concealed darkness and complicity of society. The artist was profoundly affected by the crises of the century: two world wars, despotic dictatorship in Latin America, the struggle for civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the social unrest associated with it all. The hood provided a symbol for the complex and, at times, veiled evil and inhumanity of society and the transgression of complacency and inaction, which rings particularly pertinent today. The singular lightbulb, ominously dangling overhead, signals the artist's studio, as do the series of concentric rectangles which frame the figure and suggest space, perhaps even a window or stacked paintings, while remaining eerily ambiguous. The simplified space and perennial presence of the lightbulb illuminate how Guston's work seeks to expose the zeitgeist of his era, operating outside of linear time, narrative, or movement. The revolutionary simplicity of these new works, filled with ominously hooded figures, surreal or indistinct backgrounds, imply an underlying aura of gleeful immorality.
Guston's newfound unrestrained visual vocabulary evident in Remorse encapsulates the brilliant fusion of politically charged iconography and satirical self-portraiture that define this series of the hooded figures. Guston's paintings featuring hooded figures from the last decade of his career have never been more timely, relevant, and urgent in the context of the current socio-political landscape. The hooded figure—reminiscent of a Klan member—first appeared in Guston's early drawings of the 1930s, reemerging in his late work in the 1960s in response to violence and civil strife. Guston, the youngest child of Russian Jewish emigrants who relocated to Southern California at a time in which the Ku Klux Klan had a significant membership in the region, was exposed to racism and cruelty at an early age. Through his signature reductive, almost comic-like style Guston explores the enduring capacity of figurative art to raise the most challenging questions of contemporary life and inspire self-reflection in the viewer. The hooded figures act as a vesicle for Guston to examine the anonymous brutality and veiled evil within modern society. The figures embody simplified caricatures of human vice, and through these cloaked images, explore the darkness and psychological complexity of human nature.
Displaying some of the most iconic motifs from his oeuvre, Remorse deftly demonstrates Guston’s unrivalled ability to examine human nature with an unrestrained and defiant freedom. Remarking upon the iconic hooded figures in the paintings, Guston revealed, “I perceive myself as being behind a hood. In the new series of ‘hoods’ my attempt was really not to illustrate, to do pictures of the Klansman as I had done earlier. The idea of evil fascinated me, I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan.” (Philip Guston quoted in Ingrid Pfeiffer, Philip Guston: Late Works, New York, 2013, p. 92) The present work singularly embodies Guston’s pioneering inquiry into the darkest depths of the human condition. Profoundly poignant and deftly composed, Remorse powerfully encapsulates the insurgent genius that characterizes Philip Guston’s final decade of production.
