Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Guston at McKee I

I am going to rush to see the Guston drawing show at McKee which runs through December 22, 2006. You should too.

I will probably blog my reactions to another encounter with the master. I am anticipating both the pre and post cartoony stuff equally this time. The schism in the Guston persona is another stimulant. I wish he had changed his name back to Goldstein when he showed the later figurative work for the first time.

The parallel with the other Philip, Roth, is an interesting one since there is also a stylistic tendency to elegance and restraint conflicting with the need to splay out the aging salami of our raw existence. Another apparent dichotomy that teeters and feeds the work in both cases.