Baffling Means: Writings/Drawings

by Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge

Baffling Means in a collaboration between poet Clark Coolidge and artist Philip Guston, published in 1991.

Genres: Poetry

118 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1991

About the author

"Philip Guston (June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980) was a painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. In the late 1960s Guston helped to lead a transition from abstract expressionism to neo-expressionism in painting, abandoning the so-called "pure abstraction" of abstract expressionism in favor of more cartoonish renderings of various personal symbols and objects." - wikipedia

Reviews

[Jon Cone · Rating 2 out of 5]

An apparent collaboraion between the poet Clark Coolidge and the artist Phillip Gustion. In order for a collaboration to be successful there must be a real folding-into of two distinct voices, visions, technique: there is minimal success in this book, in that regard. Surprisingly, it is Guston who manages to play more with Coolidge's words than Coolidge with Guston's chunky cartoonish drawings. Guston inhabits his drawings with debris, cycloptic heads, teeth, shoes, rubble; yet he works with the frequently uninspired text that Coolidge seemingly drops on the ground at his feet. In an ironic turn it is Coolidge that turns out to be the crunkier of the two, demonstrating the greater lack of musicality. Which is a shame, for at his best, Coolidge is a dramatically sonic poet, with a finely tuned (jazz oriented, of course) ear for highly syncopated lines. My favorite
book of Coolidge's is THE BOOK OF DURING, and the chapbook
MELANCHOLIA ~ a meditation in a painterly fashion.