Existing comment:
Philip Guston
born Montreal, Quebec, Canada 1913–died Woodstock, NY 1980
San Clemente
1975
oil on canvas
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, MD
San Clemente depicts the recently resigned U.S. president, Richard Nixon, with a grotesquely swollen leg, its deformities manifesting what Guston saw as the immorality of Nixon's tenure. A renowned abstract expressionist painter, Guston was moved by the upheavals of the late 1960s to develop a style of cartoony figuration. He described his disillusionment with abstract painting this way: "I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening to America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything -- and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?" |