You know, comments about style always seem strange to me - 'why do you work in this style, or in that style' - as if you had a choice in the matter... What you're doing is trying to stay alive and continue and not die. Philip Guston More Quotes by Philip Guston More Quotes From Philip Guston Probably the most potent desire for a painter, an image-maker, is to see it. To see what the mind can think and imagine, to realize it for oneself, through oneself, as concretely as possible. Philip Guston vision mind thinking To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing. Philip Guston possessing paint It is the bareness of drawing that I like. The act of drawing is what locates, suggests, discovers. At times it seems enough to draw, without the distractions of color and mass. Yet it is an old ambition to make drawing and painting one. Philip Guston drawing color ambition Lots of artists who paint have the experience to one degree or another... where their thinking doesn't precede their doing... It's a funny thing, what I really hate yet I have to go through with it, is the preparation. Philip Guston hate artist thinking I go to the studio everyday because one day I may go and the Angel will be there. What if I don't go and the Angel comes? Philip Guston what-if everyday angel I should like to paint like an man who has never seen a painting, but this man -myself - lives in a museum. Philip Guston painting men museums What is seen and called the picture is what remains - an evidence. Even as one travels in painting toward a state of 'unfreedom' where only certain things can happen, unaccountably the unknown and free must appear. Philip Guston painting certain states The things I felt... about certain painters of the past that... inspired me, like Cezanne and Manet... that complete losing of oneself in the work to such an extent that the work itself... felt as if a living organism was posited there on the canvas, on this surface... That's truly... the act of creation. Philip Guston cezanne losing past Sometimes I scrape off a lot. You have on the floor, like cow dung in the field, this big glob of paint... and it's just a lot of inert matter, inert paint. Then I look back at the canvas, and it's not inert - it's active, moving and living. Philip Guston cows looks moving Where do you put a form? It will move all around, bellow out and shrink, and sometimes it winds up where it was in the first place. But at the end it feels different, and it had to make the voyage. I am a moralist and cannot accept what has not been paid for, or a form that has not been lived through. Philip Guston different wind moving There are so many things in the world - in the cities - so much to see. Does art need to represent this variety and contribute to its proliferation? Can art be that free? The difficulties begin when you understand what it is that the soul will not permit the hand to make. Philip Guston cities hands art Painting seems like impossibility, with only a sign now and then of its own light. Philip Guston painting now-and-then light In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? Philip Guston painting color desire When I see people making 'abstract' painting, I think it's just a dialogue and a dialogue isn't enough. That is to say, there is you painting and this canvas. I think there has to be a third thing; it has to be a trialogue. Philip Guston abstract-painting people thinking Many works of the past complete what they announce they are going to do, to our increasing boredom. Certain others plague me because I cannot follow their intentions. I can tell at a glance what Fabritius is doing, but I am spending my life trying to find out what Rembrandt was up to. Philip Guston boredom artist past If the artist starts evaluating himself, it’s an enormous block, isn’t it? Philip Guston enormous block artist I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as a freedom. It is a loss from which we suffer, and this pathos motivates modern painting and poetry at its heart. Philip Guston suffering loss heart But you begin to feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no reason to exist at all - or is not even possible. The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance. Philip Guston judging self art There is something mysterious in this work that I do not ever what to discover. Philip Guston mysterious painting I feel more as if I'm shaping something with my hands. I feel as if I've always wanted to get to that state. Like a blind man in a dark room had some clay, what would he make? I end up with 2 or 3 forms on a canvas, but it gets very physical for me. Philip Guston dark men hands
