1960, Philip Guston, Mirror - To S.K. -- National Gallery of Art (Washington) (special exhibition)
From the NGA label: In Guston's work of the early 1960s, black and gray blobs approximate heads, and heads begin to have faces, but as he said, "If I think 'head' while I'm doing it, it becomes a mess. I want to end with something that will baffle me for some time." In this painting, a black "head" comically seems to be getting scratched by a bent green arm, while a rectangle of bare canvas at lower left may stand for the mirror in the title. The initials S. K. refer to Søren Kierkegaard, the 19th-century Danish philosopher and father of existentialism who believed that looking into a mirror, far from being a simple daily act, was a call to self-knowledge. For Kierkegaard, "To see oneself in a mirror one must recognize oneself." For Guston, the problem of seeing was even more general: "The thing is recognized only as it comes into existence."
Link to other paintings from the exhibition "Philip Guston Now".
1960, Philip Guston, Mirror - To S.K. -- National Gallery of Art (Washington) (special exhibition)
From the NGA label: In Guston's work of the early 1960s, black and gray blobs approximate heads, and heads begin to have faces, but as he said, "If I think 'head' while I'm doing it, it becomes a mess. I want to end with something that will baffle me for some time." In this painting, a black "head" comically seems to be getting scratched by a bent green arm, while a rectangle of bare canvas at lower left may stand for the mirror in the title. The initials S. K. refer to Søren Kierkegaard, the 19th-century Danish philosopher and father of existentialism who believed that looking into a mirror, far from being a simple daily act, was a call to self-knowledge. For Kierkegaard, "To see oneself in a mirror one must recognize oneself." For Guston, the problem of seeing was even more general: "The thing is recognized only as it comes into existence."
Link to other paintings from the exhibition "Philip Guston Now".