I Paint What I Want to See

by Philip Guston

Illuminating reflections on painting and drawing from one of the most revered artists of the twentieth century

'Thank God for yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, and permanent green light'

How does a painter see the world? Philip Guston, one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, spoke about art with unparalleled candour and commitment. Touching on work from across his career as well as that of his fellow artists and Renaissance heroes, this selection of his writings, talks and interviews draws together some of his most incisive reflections on iconography and abstraction, metaphysics and mysticism, and, above all, the nature of painting and drawing.

'Among the most important, powerful and influential American painters of the last 100 years ... he's an art world hero' Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine

'Guston's paintings make us think hard' Aindrea Emelife, Guardian

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Essays, Art History, Theory, Design, Modern Classics

243 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 28, 2022

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

[Yves S]

I am not crazy about Philip Guston's work (Philip Guston says that of Ronald Kitaj's work on page 211, Kitaj, whose work I am crazy about), I am not crazy about Guston's work, I mean, who am I to say this, but it is just that I find it crude (to use the words of Harold Rosenberg in this very book), and I generally struggle to connect with his paintings. I had to set the scene and clear this up before starting.

So here we are, I am not the biggest fan of his work but there is something about artists, people who produce art, breath art, live art, and of course always think about art, that makes their discussions, thoughts and writings about art, absolutely fascinating. Philip Guston is no exception. This book is rich. Abstract at times, there were moments when I had no idea what he was on about, but others where he was irresistibly captivating. In this book, by using simple words, most texts are transcripts of recorded interviews, Guston allows us to enter his creative process and the passion for his art is charismatically contagious and spreads out of every page.

If you love art, or if you are an artist, if you love Guston’s work or even if you don’t like it so much, you will enjoy this book.
If you are not really into art, perhaps you will enjoy it less, but I firmly believe that reading and, in this case, almost listening, to someone who discusses the subject he is the most passionate about can not fail to captivate the reader.
Guston is again someone you would like to invite for dinner and who would entertain and light up the evening with endless reflections and digressions about art. And maybe by the end of the evening I would be able to understand and appreciate his work better.
Here is an idea: invite David Hockney to the same dinner, I would do the cooking and ... the listening!!

[David]

Ofcourse, with Guston you're better off getting the Collected Writings, but I love these little white penguin classics. I love the size. Do they fit in my pocket? Probably not, but it feels like a possibility.
And I suppose in the Collected Writings there's a lot of repetition and this smaller Penguin edition has the important stuff; the interview with Rosenberg, and the Studio Notes.
I've just finished reading the Gordon biography of Angela Carter and so I've been thinking how strange that there was a time (pre-internet or pre-post-modernism?) when culture was so homogeneous, small and militantly focused on one approach. In the Carter biography Gordon describes a literary world where middle-class realism is the order of the day. Fantasy existed only in the pulps or in outposts like Kafka and Borges. The legend of Guston is that he bravely stood up against the Stalinist dogma of abstract painting. But is that a true representation of the cultural scene? Is it a false 'culture war' way of seeing history? Or, was the whole world and everything in it set into an us-or-them binary arrangement because of the Cold War? Whether in the literary world of Carter or the arty world of Guston.
Remember that when Guston had his first 'stumble-bum' exhibition there was lots of exciting figurative painting and image-making happening. And much of it was a clear influence on him. Would he have seemed like such an outsider if he was exhibiting in Chicago rather than New York?
Whether the Guston myth (that he was quite so singular and in opposition to the art of his times) is entirely true, he definitely seems super-relevant to today. And not just because of the fairly recent hoo-ha about his Klu Klux paintings. Olivia Laing says some interesting things about this in Everybody.
What I appreciate most, re-reading this stuff, is how he manages to hold that existential, post-war bleakness without becoming too heroic and romantic. He generally resists becoming grandiloquent. He says that he can imagine a time when painting will cease to exist. Surely we've arrived at that time.

[Francisca]

Encontrarte con un artista como Philip Guston (nacido en Montreal, 27 de junio de 1913 y fallecido en Nueva York, 7 de junio de 1980)  en estos tiempos es tener un soplo de aire fresco en tu mente y espíritu, y tu alma, quizás, también. Me asombra la capacidad enorme que tenía este hombre de asentar el mundo en él. Digamos que él no embellecía las cosas, simplemente trataba de poner un orden intelectual en su arte, su manera de sentir la vida y, cómo no, en su manera de pintar y dibujar.

En este libro que ha traducido Patrick Stasny para la editorial Elba, nos encontramos ante un libro que nos mete en el pensamiento de la obra del autor, y no solo, sino también en sus diferentes influencias y diferentes pintores que le seducirían a lo largo de su carrera. Es asombroso el detalle por los detalles, lo que parece estar oculto. Como bien nos dice, todo objeto oculta cosas. Quizá no lo dice con estas palabras pero nos hace ver que sombra y objeto en realidad son una sola cosa y que la mirada del artista no es más que un simple hallazgo de lo enigmático, lo que no se podía ver y estaba oculto, lo que encontramos en la vida y la materialidad del mundo.

Guston haría pintura figurativa, pero también haría retratos y algunos dibujos y cuadros fuera de todo orden estético de lo que podemos considerar académico. Amigo de Morton Feldman, del cual vemos aquí algunas palabras e influencias, este artista nos desvela la simbiosis artística ante lo que el profesional del arte se encuentra. Conocemos su manera no solo de pensar el arte, sino también de ser. Me fascina cómo nos envuelven sus palabras a través de diálogos, con David Sylvester o Clark Coolidge, y no solo sino también sus diferentes charlas o extractos de sus diarios.

Para meterse en la mente de Guston no hace falta que hayamos visto sus pinturas, porque luego iremos a verlas hayámoslo hecho o no. Sus pinturas son ese matiz de la realidad que envuelve a la vida en un carisma esperanzador. Ante todo, el artista para Guston no es más que un mediador del sistema intelectual y emocional. Todo arte, para él, es intelectual y emocional. Y no cabe duda que viendo los conceptos de sus pinturas, los cuáles casi siempre ha visto antes en su mente, podemos apreciar lo verdadero de la vida, las pequeñas cosas, las cosas que parecen menos importantes pero que se tornan verdaderamente significativas. Me emociona pensar en lo que dice y cómo lo dice, hay cierto halo carismático en su figura como artista, como si realmente lo que nos dice fuera revelador e ingenioso.

Y es que de algún modo estamos ante un artista que piensa y decide por sí mismo, y elige y da con el error porque no hay error si no hemos elegido. Quién sabe qué encontró la Escuela de Nueva York en Guston, porque sin duda tenía una mirada y un pensamiento que se escapa de lo proclamado por entonces como abstracción o expresionismo. Él no soportaba la abstracción, era como si la pintura tuviera que ser materia definida. Ya diría que la pintura era materia, algo que se podía tocar, a pesar de que tuviera una estructura técnicamente invisible. Sus cuadros nos revelan ese aspecto de la realidad que no hemos visto, pero que identificamos.

Las leyes del arte son generosas. Y Guston eras muy, excesivamente generoso. Sin duda nos adentra en un mundo donde la forma se convierte en asidero de lo virtuoso y lo mundano. Él, que pasaba largos tiempos pintando, o incluso largos tiempos (meses) solo dibujando, nos transmite calma y voluntad para pintar y crear, pues crear es de algún modo vivir. Arte y vida son aquí una misma cosa y no podemos negarnos a percibirlo de otra manera.

[Marina]

"When I complete a painting that feels real - I think afterwards that I have found a way - a road (...)
And again you must learn that there is no road - no way - all you possess is the luck to learn to see each time - freshly. Newly.
No good to paint in the head (...) You can only hope that you are alert - ready - to see.
What joy it is for paint to become a thing - a being. Believe in this miracle - it is your only hope."

[Shay]

“Thank god for yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, and permanent green light.”

I have more pages tabbed in this book than anything else I’ve read this year. Philip Guston’s beautiful and stubborn words have changed my view of art.

[Darby Jack]

Fantastic book. Reads like your favorite teacher who has a handful of personal anecdotes that you become familiar with over a year. Great book to read if you need to remember that painting is cool because it makes you feel good to do it. Highly recommend.

[Bettemay]

Redelijk wat herhaling in het boek. En het is zo gestructureerd dat er vaak context mist. Ben zelf echt te lui om op te gaan zoeken waar ze het over hebben. Naast dat zeggen ze wel een hoop mooie dingen. Voor echte kunst nerds wel leuk

[Pane]

Honest clear accounts of one artist talking about his process. No criptic arty language but relatable and approachable writing about making a painting, this proves to me that's mostly art critics that makes art a difficult subject, for artist it all more simple.

[sonja]

arvestades milline raamat see oli meeldis see mulle yllatavalt palju. mu esimene non fiction raamat ja tundub et need pole ikka minu cup of tea. oli huvitav lugeda maalimisest kunstniku povist ja pani mind targana tundma!

[Isai Soto]

It’s ok

[Aidan Woodworth]

Muah I love this book

[Sinag]

It is such a joy!!! to read a painter talk about painting!! What really stuck with me is that idea of the enigma and being ready to see when you paint. "No good to paint in the head — what happens is what happens when you put the paint down — you can only hope that you are alert — ready to see." "Ideas about art don't matter. They collapse anyway in front of the painting." And how true this is!! My terrible paintings are (mostly) the ones I've planned out and followed to death and overworked to the point of asphyxiation— on the other hand, the paintings I've plunged into armed only with traces of a form and an after(pre?)-image, ones that have transformed and breathed and billowed out as I work on it, oh they're the most wondrous ones.

Thank you Guston for fanning the fire of my love for painting.

"It's almost like open-eyed dreaming, you know? As if I were in front of the canvas, dreaming and almost knowing what I was going to paint."

"I wang to make something I never saw before and be changed by it."

[Milanimal]

five stars although at the beginning it was tepid. A great conversation with Coolidge plus the notes at the end make this dear

[Donia]

“Ideas about art don’t matter. They collapse anyway in front of the painting.”

[Jordan Bradley]

Although this book only really became 5-star worthy in its second half (from Conversation with Clark Coolidge onwards), the intrigue of the ideas and images explored in its later chapters were enough to deserve such a rating. Guston’s thoughts about the intent of an artist, the act of painting as a weird form of remembering, and the sense of reinventing himself each time he goes to create something are so illuminating. His belief that art is about trying to “nail something down without killing it” is oddly savage and violent but true, and I found a lot of his ideas very applicable to writing. This is a book that can be read and appreciated by anyone with a creative discipline, and it doesn’t ever shut out non-painters with its ideas. The final chapter of notes are as special as anything the book has to offer. One of the best notes is this: “Pictures should tell stories. It is what makes me want to paint. To see, in a painting, what one has always wanted to see, but hasn’t, until now. For the first time.” There’s something so thrillingly childlike about that idea, and it encapsulates the entire book’s playful yet insightful spirit. This is a book I will remember and refer to for a long time.

[Gurldoggie]

Transcribed dialogues and scattered writings from this enduring but enigmatic artist. Fascinating to read about the ideas and practices that motivated his long unpredictable career. Much of it is repetitive, but then that's the nature of obsession. Considering the constant references to his and others' visual work, this book REALLY should've included more illustrations. Far more questions than answers.

[michal k-c]

Not exactly a skeleton key to Guston’s work but there are several illuminating transcripts in here, love his dipshit grad student audience at Yale about midway through the book. Great anecdote re: Philip Roth towards the end

[Elli]

What a dude

[Beth]

Interesting, would be best to read other books (biography by his daughter) to get a more rounded view

[Dirk Van Eyck]

banger absolu

[Isabel Bazett]

I can't wait to come back to this book again and again and learn it all off by heart <3 such an amazing perspective on art and painting

[Seho Myung]

… I think that creating is a double process. You have to be sophisticated as hell and innocent as hell at the same time. It’s a real impossibility, but I think that’s what it is.

[Phoebe]

Really did nothing for me, men talking about painting. A couple of underlined things but….

[Elyse Vandeleur]

Zoooooo goed, danku Nathan voor de recommendation.

Ik heb zin om een canvas klaar te zetten en naar de vogeltjes te luisteren

[Kuzmicbojana]

Gracias a mis amigos ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥
Još mi je profilna na korici
#sudbina

[Juliana]

“When I complete a painting that feels real — I think afterwards that I have found a way — a road. And my mind races on — painting pictures in my head. Infinite possibilities. What a delusion this is. All the possibilities — oh, at last I know. These are mere notions — proven to be so when you start painting again. They all tumble down when paint is put on. An again you must learn that there is no road — no way — all you losses is the luck to learn to see each time — freshly. Newly.”

[Rachel]

Some parts are super slow, but some parts are super interesting.

[Nathan De Riddere]

Philip guston jwz

[Cole Blouin]

one of the best books about art. The final pages are among the best.

[Eva Rajher]

Always a bit skeptical about artists talking about their work, as they tend to fall short - either the writing is bigger and more interesting the the work itself (which I think is the case of Guston) or the other way around. But this is also incredibly relatable, so I understand.
Very interesting to learn about his process and struggles (also very relatable), but the book becomes repetitive, since it’s mostly a collection of interviews and talks he gave at universities. However, I love the obsession of trying to paint something as if you are the first person to paint it or to see it the first time, and his need for the works to be strange and exciting.
It feels as if he breathes, lives, talks, and dreams art, which is super inspiring and I underlined so many beautiful quotes.

“probably the only thing one can really learn, the only technique to learn, is the capacity to change. /…/ you have to keep learning how to play in new ways all the time.”
“And again you must learn there is no road - no way - all you possess is the luck to learn to see each time - freshly. Newly. No good to paint in the head - what happens is what happens when you put the paint down - you can only hope that you are alert - ready - to see. What joy it is for paint to become a thing - a being. Believe in this miracle - it is your only hope.”