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Night Studio: A Memoir Of Philip Guston
Binding: Paperback
Author: Musa Mayer
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Features:
Average Rating: 4.5
Total Customer Reviews: 6
List Price: $18.50
Our Price: $15.81
Sales Rank: 128704
Product Description
Philip Guston (1913–1980) was driven, sustained, and consumed by art. His style ranged from the social realism of his WPA murals through his abstract expressionist canvasses of the 1950s and 1960s (when he counted Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, and Kline among his friends) to his cartoonlike paintings of Klansmen, disembodied heads, and tangled piles of everyday objects. Critics and public alike savaged Guston for his return to figurative art, but today his late work is recognized for the singular power of its darkly hilarious vision. Musa Mayer augments her firsthand knowledge with extensive interviews with his family, friends, students, and colleagues, as well as Guston's own letters, notes, and autobiographical writings, to re-create a turbulent era in American art. Night Studio, profusely illustrated (including almost a dozen paintings in full color), illuminates not only the life of a great artist, but the experience of growing up in his shadow.
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Users Product Reviews: |
Product Review Summary: Daughters look at Daddy the Artist Quite a interesting prospective of an Artist. Helps frame him in the times, 60's and 70's. Tells of a young woman (the author/daughter) struggles with feminism and and how her Mother was sadly stuck in 40's and 50's, "be a good wife and don't say anything"
Back to Phillip, this tells equally about the real artist/creative struggle. I don't give him a free pass for all his problems, but this book really lets you know how flawed the "art business" really is.
The book made it possible to look back at the changing times and to relive them as I remember them as an Artist and Father of a little girl.
Product Review Summary: In the intimacy (and shadow) of genius Night Studio is a wonderful book.
Let me start with what it is not: it is not an art historical survey of Philip Guston's career; it is not a philosophical essay on the meaning of his art. Nor do you have to be an all-out fan of Philip Guston's to read it.
On the other hand, it is an almost day-to-day account of a daughter's life in the shadow of her father who happened to be one of the greatest American painters of the XXth century. The author managed to write a moving book, describing the overwhelming and complex personality of her father, the conflicts, the anguish, the contradictions, the closeness and, at the same time, the aloofness that made her life next to Guston so rewarding but also so frustrating. You can sense the admiration of a daughter towards her father, but also the weariness of having to fight a formidable rival, art, to gain some space in the life of this larger-than-life father.
This is a book that you only drop when reaching the last page.
Product Review Summary: worthwhile glimpses of a difficult genius Musa Mayer (Guston's daughter) has undertaken a brave and cathartic task in writing a biography of her father, a self-obsessed painter. Philip Guston could well be regarded as the last artist of an era inasmuch as Gustav Mahler could be regarded as the last composer of classical symphonies. With Guston one comes to the end of painting. What started with Cezanne ends here.
Guston knew he wanted to paint in the tradition of those before him and paid a heavy price in order to achieve it. Mayer's account is of a sometimes loving more often absent father who disappointed his daughter so much so that this book is also an attempt at healing wounds. Guston appears as a larger than life figure with equally large depressive states through which into the small hours he would struggle with his canvases.
Mayer is neither maudlin nor sentimental and for a few pages here and there gives crystalline insights into her father's work that any artist should appreciate.
This then is not your typical soup to nuts biography but rather a personal view of Guston as seen through the pained eyes of one trying to purge as well as admire.
Product Review Summary: Unique Guston Biography Night Studio is an excellent read about one of the more fascinating and well thought out artist's in american history, Philip Guston. From the very personal standpoint only one year after Guston's premature death at the age of 66, Meyer shows both a historical and emotional view of her father.
As Guston did in his art, Meyer attempts to explain her father's life as honestly as she can. Sometimes critical sometimes idolizing his character and persona, Guston nonetheless comes off as a very fascinating and mysterious figure. Meyer puts plenty on the table to digest about his life in a very tasteful way despite some of his discrepancies.
Dispersed through the book are some of Guston's philosophical views as well as some of his contemporaries which are very fascinating in light of the more detached design/invention philosophy of today's modern art. We follow his career through the WPA program, the abstract expressionism movement and the boom of conceptual and pop art.
There is plenty of Guston's personal life as well. Although an extremely private man, we get a glimpse of his life through notes found in the studio, recollections from friends, family and Meyer herself.
The writing is sometimes confessional sometimes traditional storytelling. The stories themselves aren't always in chronological order which meant I had to refer back once or twice to get a hold on where I was in his life but I think it came together quite nicely.
Highly recommended.
Product Review Summary: one of the best artist biographies i have read As a painter, consumed by my own work at times, this book was such a treat. A wonderful and compelling look at one of the most influential artists of my career thus far. so emotional and real.
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Similar Products with reviews:
Philip Guston: Retrospective
Philip Guston (Modern Masters Series, Vol. 11)
Guston in Time: Remembering Philip Guston
Philip Guston's Late Work: A Memoir
Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy
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