After being cancelled in 2020, the controversial retrospective of work by Philip Guston comes to the UK

The expansive, stunning Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern enables us to follow the development of this prolific and important artist. Born in Canada in 1913 to refugee parents who had fled persecution in Ukraine, Guston (then Goldstein) was the youngest of seven children. His father took his own life and 10-year old Guston discovered him hanging from a shed rafter. Encouraged by his mother, the young Guston practised drawing, hiding from others in a closet lit by one bare bulb. It is no coincidence that a roped noose and light bulb repeatedly feature in Guston’s works; or that the Holocaust, racism and civil rights were major preoccupations. In 1932, his brother’s legs were crushed when his own car rolled on to him and he died of gangrene. This trauma is also referenced in much of Guston’s art.

His teenage work demonstrates a precocious talent: Mother and Child, painted in 1930, is a large and accomplished canvas. The woman’s stylised small head and substantial body is reminiscent of Picasso figures of the period, while the empty building beside her and the floorboards at her feet echo de Chirico.

Too poor to attend art school, Guston nevertheless had many creative influences. Isaac Babel was a favourite author and he befriended several contemporary artists and writers.

Guston’s work reflected the zeitgeist of each decade. In the 1930s, he worked on murals and public art projects. The imagery is both politically aware, with the notorious hooded figure making a debut; and deeply personal, including for example, an old kettle that reappears in later pictures. During the early 1940s, Guston painted empathetic portraits and complex compositions depicting city children (his own daughter was born in 1943). These recall the upheaval and poverty of the war years and reflect the figurative art of the period.

However, by 1947, Guston realised that what he most enjoyed painting and felt to be most authentic, were the simplified shapes filling the lower corner of the canvas. And so began his years of abstract expressionism.

At the end of the 1960s, when Guston returned to figurative representation, he was shunned by his artist friends: all but de Kooning. Yet Guston eschewed concerns for convention, style and aesthetics to pursue his own truth.

A recurring motif is a book, forced into solidity with thick simplified outlines drawn with a brush. Coerced into a heavy object, the tome becomes a miniature skyscraper, a stone edifice with rectangular dark dotted windows, its edges slightly curved. The ossified manuscript thus becomes an ancient stone tablet, resembling those carried by Moses and inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

Political unrest in 1968 recalled Guston’s earlier memories of the Klu Klux Klan and his thoughts about the Holocaust. He was adamant that an artist’s responsibility was to “unnumb” themself and bear witness to atrocity. Half a century later, the challenge remains, and is perhaps more necessary than ever.

The dire seriousness of the subject matter is offset by humour. Guston’s heavy use of deep red was not, he assured, to symbolise blood, but was simply inspired by his love of pastrami. The cartoonish nature of the later pictures reflect his boyhood fascination with comics and his continued love of caricature. From Krazy Cat to the KKK, 20th-century America is encapsulated in the artist's works. The hooded figures become less about external society and more about the capacity for evil that lies within all of us. When Guston paints a self-portrait of himself wearing the infamous white peaked hood of the KKK, he is questioning his own psyche.

The late works lay bare the artist's lifestyle, ill health and troubled past. In one image (used on the Tate’s catalogue cover), a bloated figure lies smoking in bed, the huge chin and eye in profile, a plate of congealed chips on his chest.

The old motifs continue: dismembered legs, referencing his brother’s terrible accident; ropes and the noose; stark lightbulbs. We are reminded of the Holocaust in depictions of piles of shoes, and by an image of fire. It is implied too, in a large painting of a single hat on a brick wall, where thin horizontal white lines dissect the canvas above, like barbed wire.

Painted in 1977, Couple in Bed is a touching portrait of the artist and his wife. He lies in the foetal position, knees drawn up, one hand clutching brushes and the woman who held him together. It is one of the most revealing pictures in this remarkable show.

Finally, Guston’s homage to Michelangelo depicts the Creator as artist – or is it the artist as Creator? The “unnumb” hand is not ‘up in the clouds’, but ‘down to earth’, recording the reality of life.

By Irene Wise

Header image: Female Nude with Easel by Philip Guston, 1935 © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Philip Guston runs until Sunday 25 February. Tate Modern, London, SE1 9TG. tate.org.uk

Irene Wise is a writer, artist and educator. She was also the first art director at JR magazine. irenejuliawise.com