1975, Philip Guston, The Palette -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
From the museum label: Guston grappled with the best way to describe the work he was making in the 1970s. In place of "figurative," a term then being attached to paintings like the ones in this gallery, he preferred "clear enigma." For Guston, "figurative" suggested the mere reproduction of "visual data." To paint a "clear enigma," on the other hand, involved conjuring an image that seems simultaneously recognizable and strange, one that offers a sense of seeing something familiar, something tangible, as if for the first time. The artist achieves just such a delicate balance in The Palette, in which he renders ambiguous and abstract an otherwise ordinary artist's worktable - specifically, his own, given the presence of his wife's name, "Musa."
1975, Philip Guston, The Palette -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
From the museum label: Guston grappled with the best way to describe the work he was making in the 1970s. In place of "figurative," a term then being attached to paintings like the ones in this gallery, he preferred "clear enigma." For Guston, "figurative" suggested the mere reproduction of "visual data." To paint a "clear enigma," on the other hand, involved conjuring an image that seems simultaneously recognizable and strange, one that offers a sense of seeing something familiar, something tangible, as if for the first time. The artist achieves just such a delicate balance in The Palette, in which he renders ambiguous and abstract an otherwise ordinary artist's worktable - specifically, his own, given the presence of his wife's name, "Musa."