A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A lot of Philip Guston’s works were inspired by the political and social upheaval at the time; to what extent do you think modern audiences can draw parallels between the context of the works’ production and that of this exhibition?
I think so, absolutely… Guston was an artist who was so socially and politically engaged, particularly in his youth growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Guston was a left-leaning Jewish immigrant to Los Angeles - his family had fled antisemitic violence in Eastern Europe, and in Los Angeles he saw the injustices that were around him in society, particularly the persecution of black people, and he really wanted to make art that challenged that and responded to it. He comes back to that again in later life, when he sees images of the Vietnam War and of police beating up protestors at the Democratic Convention in 1968. At the time he was making these beautiful abstract works which we’re surrounded by now as I speak. He asked himself “How can I see all this happening in the news, all these terrible things, and go into a studio just to adjust a red to a blue?”. He had to make political work, he had to make work that said something about the injustices that he saw around him - and I think that’s something that will really resonate with visitors.
So, was the decision to stage the exhibition itself intended as a response to contemporary culture? Or was it simply ‘time’ for a Guston retrospective?
Yeah, I think it was just the time for a retrospective; these exhibitions take years and years to put together; we always try to look and draw out resonances with what’s happening because it’s what visitors will find interesting… It wasn’t a response to anything in particular, but we really wanted to tell Guston’s story and really be led by the work he was making, the challenges that he was facing, and the questions he was asking himself as an artist. We always try to do justice to the artist.
Guston later grew critical of Abstraction; did this cause any problems in curating a career retrospective? For instance, was it more important to display his evolution as an artist, or was there ever a temptation to focus more on his eventual style?
Well, his eventual style is displayed in the works that he would go on to produce in the late 60s and 70s. These would go on to become his best-known works, the ones that make him one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century, but by no means did we want to downplay what he’d done before; we’re standing in this room surrounded by the abstract works that he made in the 1950s and 60s [Room 3 - From the Wall to the Easel]. He was an incredibly successful abstract painter, and one of the leading artists in his field at the time: he was chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960, and he had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1962. It’s funny, when I speak to artists and art critics, they’re sometimes drawn more to these works, so it’s like we have a mini-exhibition within the exhibition which tells the story of this period of his career.
One of the defining aspects of Guston’s work is the blurring of divisions, for instance between the personal and the political. Did this lead to any complications in deciding how his works were to be displayed in this show?
It’s not something we particularly thought of… We wanted to tell the show chronologically, and we framed the whole show, albeit gently, around this theme of dreams and nightmares. It’s something that Guston was often grappling with: his own artistic dreams and then also the nightmares of reality, and the troubles and struggles that he was facing and that he saw in the world. We wanted to frame the show chronologically to give this sense of development, and of the different artistic changes that he went through across his career. One of the more personal and biographical things that we really wanted to highlight is the focus on his early years - there was the time he was growing up in Los Angeles as a teenager, and then he was actually invited by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera to paint this giant mural in Morelia, Mexico; this is the first time that visitors will really get the chance to witness this mural at this scale in the UK. We really wanted to showcase that, in the 1930s, Guston was a muralist. That was another period that hasn’t really been given the attention that it’s due which we really wanted to bring to the fore in this show.
The exhibition was delayed for two years, citing a desire to do justice to the themes explored in Guston’s works; what changes, if any, were made to the exhibition in this time?
There were probably four or five major changes which I’ve spoken about already, but I’ll recap them; we changed the show to make it more chronological, around the theme of ‘dreams and nightmares’, which we think really helps to contextualise the different phases of his career - in particular the late ‘hoods’ works and how he arrives at that moment in his life and career. We also really wanted to draw out Guston’s transnational connections - three of our tour partners were based in America and we’re the only European institution putting this show on. As such, we really wanted to highlight the fact that we often think of Guston as an American artist and forget that he’s actually Canadian, has present-day Ukrainian heritage, made this incredible mural in Mexico, and was fascinated with Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance art. He went to Italy at three key moments of his career, and he was really inspired by European artists and European art movements, so we really wanted to draw some of those themes out. We also wanted to focus on Guston’s early years and his time spent in Los Angeles when he was making quite political art and creating incredible murals which we have photographs of in the show… We also brought in some new and different works; about twenty-four of the works were changed since the initial development, so that’s about a quarter of the works in the show, and that was in order to help tell some of these stories and events.
Philip Guston is showing at Tate Modern from 5th October 2023 - 25th February 2024.
Make sure to check in on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
