Guston in Time

Starred review from August 25, 2003
The appearance of the critic, novelist and poet Feld's engaging memoir of his late friend the painter Philip Guston (1913–1980) records a double loss, for Feld died in 2001, shortly after its completion. And although the book functions as a moving memorial to a deep and supportive friendship, Feld the critic forgoes the tired parade of anecdotes common to the personal memoir to keep a keen focus on Guston's work, especially the paintings of his last years. Scott Fitzgerald's "there are no second acts in American lives" has been disproved over and over again; Guston added a third act that was unlike anything in the history of art, American or otherwise. Beginning as a muralist in the great Mexican social realist tradition, Guston went on, as many before him, to become an abstract expressionist, but one of uncommon lyric power. But late in his career, Guston returned to figuration, employing motifs from early work (such as hooded Klan figures, now with cigars) and truncated self-portraiture (eyes, heads and enormous-footed sleeping figures) that seemed derived as much from Robert Crumb and the Sunday funnies as from the "historical tradition." Feld's readings of a number of these paintings, informed by his intimacy with the artist, are near-definitive models of passionate clarity and explication. Interwoven with these readings are similarly vivid glimpses of a troubled but lovable man, and the friends—including Philip Roth, composer Morton Feldman and poet Clark Coolidge—whose devotion to Guston is equally palpable. The book is valuable, too, for the light it sheds on the often ill-understood reciprocal nature of the relationships between artists and critics. For just as it is clear that for Guston Feld's articulate support was crucial, Guston's responses to Feld's criticism and other work seems just as important. Guston himself is abundantly present, not only in Feld's reminiscences and the well-chosen illustrations, but in the many letters to Feld that are included. Such generosity is typical of this remarkable volume, which recalls Rilke's "Letters on Cezanne" in its joyful intensity.

October 1, 2003
Following his much-derided break from pure abstract art, the American artist Philip Guston (1913-80) wrote a letter to the novelist and critic Feld (Zwilling's Dream), initiating a stimulating friendship that would span the last five years of Guston's life. Prior to his own death in 2001, Feld assembled this collection of personal reminiscences and anecdotes from his dynamic interaction with one of 20th-century America's most enigmatic artists. Though perfectly timed to correspond with the retrospective exhibition of Guston's work organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (see Michael Auping's excellent Philip Guston Retrospective), this biography/remembrance/collected letters suffers from a lack of identity and focus. Rather than a critical analysis of Guston's late work, it is a record of the intellectual sparring match between two dear friends. Each chapter of the book's first section begins with a letter or excerpt, but these are not fully identified or reproduced in full in the otherwise chronological compilation of letters that follows. The "Letters" section offers a wonderful epistolary record of the dialog between artist and writer; however, the format and arrangement of the book hinders any straightforward examination of the letters. Recommended only for libraries wishing to supplement existing Guston scholarship.-Kraig Binkowski, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

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