In 1970, Philip Guston, who was the most quietly painterly of the generation of abstract American artists known as the abstract expressionists, revealed a new body of work at Marlborough Gallery in New York. Instead of the aggregations of clumpy brushwork, the atmospheric jumbles and close-toned indeterminacies of the works that had made his name over the previous two decades, here, suddenly, were cartoonish depictions of pointy-hatted Ku Klux Klansmen, going about their business of idiot evil. They ruminate in their rooms, drive around looking for trouble, paint and smoke in a world as clunky and cartoonish as they are. All Guston’s skills were pressed into a new and parodic purpose.
This cartoonish, figurative late style shocked the art world and alienated the artist from many of his friends. The new paintings were derided, called “as simple-minded as the bigotry they denounce”, and Guston was labelled “a mandarin pretending to be a stumblebum”. The pile-on was horrible. At the opening, only Willem de Kooning told Guston he was envious. “It’s about freedom,” De Kooning said.
