Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston

by Musa Mayer

The classic, intimate memoir of the artist by Guston’s daughter, with a new afterword by Mayer Philip Guston (1913–80) is one of the outstanding figures in 20th-century American art. Beginning as a muralist in the 1930s, Guston embraced the lyrical vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism in his paintings and drawings after his move to the East Coast. Following an artistic crisis in the mid-1960s, his return to figuration―focusing first on simple things of ordinary life, later evolving to the enigmatic and iconic cartoonlike forms for which he is now best known―shook the art world.
Night Studio is a deeply personal account of growing up in the shadow of a great artist, a daughter’s quest to better understand her father, based on letters and notes by the artist and interviews with those who knew him. First published to critical acclaim in 1988, this richly illustrated new edition includes a new afterword by Mayer.
Musa Mayer’s first book about her father, the memoir Night Studio , was published in 1988 by Alfred A. Knopf. A lavishly illustrated new edition was published in 2016 after Hauser & Wirth took over the representation of the estate of Philip Guston from the McKee Gallery. Since her retirement from a 25-year career as a research and patient advocate for people living with breast cancer, she has curated Guston exhibitions in New York, London, Hong Kong and Los Angeles. Her second book with Hauser & Wirth Publishers, Philip Nixon Drawings 1971 and 1975 , coauthored with Debra Bricker Balken, was awarded the FILAF d’Or international prize as the best international art book of 2017. Besides managing the estate of Philip Guston, Mayer is president of the Guston Foundation, whose projects include the website PhilipGuston.org, which is built around a chronology of Guston’s career and exhibition history as well as catalogues raisonnés of his paintings, drawings and archives. Mayer lives in New York City with her husband, Tom.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Biography

369 pages, Paperback

Published May 9, 2023

About the author

Musa Mayer is an author, advocate, and 14-year breast cancer survivor. She left a career as a mental health counselor to pursue an MFA from Columbia University in writing. While she was a student at Columbia, she published her first book, Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston, her own story of growing up in the New York art world of the 1950s. Less than a year later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has since published two books on breast cancer: her 1993 memoir, Examining Myself: One Woman's Story of Breast Cancer Treatment and Recovery, Advanced Breast Cancer: A Guide to Living with Metastatic Disease (O'Reilly & Associates, 1998), the only book of its kind; and her latest, After Breast Cancer: Answers to the Questions You're Afraid to Ask. In After Breast Cancer, Mayer explores the the feelings of uncertainty and fear that breast cancer patients commonly face after treatment. She offers survival statistics and the voices of 40 breast cancer survivors to help readers cope and thrive.

Reviews

[Tyler Sheldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was glad to read this while my spouse was getting their MFA in Studio Art! Riveting. I highly recommend it for all, but especially those interested in art as a practice.

[Mathis roll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an amazing read for art history lovers !

[Lauren Genovese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could not put it down. Musa is an amazing writer. This book is both beautiful and gut wrenching.