Interpreting Great Paintings #1: 'The Studio' (1969) by Philip Guston
Please join me as I start a new series of videos interpreting great paintings by looking at 'The Studio' by Philip Guston.
My approach to interpretation has four basic steps:
- firstly try to make your own initial interpretation without reference to books, articles, or even videos like this one!
- secondly, test your interpretation by looking at other works by the same artist, and paintings by other artists on a similar subject
- thirdly then consider the historical context at the time it was painted - what was going on in the world then?
- finally compare your interpretation to those made by other people. What does this reveal about your own preoccupations and biases? Perhaps themes for your own work?
In this way we can study many aspects of the painting: the 'how' (color, gesture etc); the 'what' (overall composition, important elements within the painting etc) and what is for me the most exciting part of painting - the 'why', what the artist intended to say.
This is my own personal response to the painting, but my aim is to encourage you to think about your own response. This type of reflection will help you crystallise your own ideas, which then will hopefully find their way into your own work...
So do you agree with me? Or do you see something different? Do you think that you need to know about Guston's personal history and the context in which it was painted to be able to interpret the painting 'correctly'? This is very relevant to Guston's work because a major retrospective of his was controversially cancelled in 2020 because of concerns that his depiction of Ku Klux Klan figures might be taken as support for the white supremacist movement.
Let me know what you think in the Comments section!
Пікірлер: 13
Very true, it's very true and nothing has changed. Well done
@GreatArtistsSteal
3 жыл бұрын
thanks.
I’ve just come across your channel and it’s brilliant! I do find that art schools never actually go into enough depth about the technical side of painting and make us learn on our own, I’ve been so frustrated at how to paint the things I actually want to do, and the best way is to learn from the artists before us
@GreatArtistsSteal
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks for your positive comment. Yes I agree with what you said about Art Schools, I don’t see why art schools can’t do both, encourage us to learn on our own and pass on previously discovered techniques. Otherwise we will remain in the rediculous situation where we are having to reinvent the wheel all the time. I, for example, spent twenty years learning how to glaze when knowedge about glazing could have been passed on to me in one afternoon. This is main reason why I created this channel.
Great to look at this painting in context of then and now. Thank you
@GreatArtistsSteal
3 жыл бұрын
thanks Anita.
I am enjoying your channel. Your interpretation is interesting and I certainly believe correct..Thank you for the courage to say so.
@GreatArtistsSteal
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks Winifred. That’s a very encouraging comment.
Thanks for a very interesting video.
@GreatArtistsSteal
3 жыл бұрын
Hi Wendy,, thanks for your comment I am pleased you liked it.
1:05........one individual void of color has five chances(brushes) to recreate or destroy as David did with 5 choice stones...only neededing one to destroy the green Goliath.
I think, with Guston, you have to think in terms of his radical youth. He had work destroyed by American Legion types that was critical of the Klan, and lynching and such. In the 60s he said he said 'I got tired of all that purity; I wanted to tell stories again.' and when you look at this piece in that context he's using the KKK as a metaphor for the anxiety and ambivalence around his own role as an artist in extraordinarily turbulent times, politically, and what it might mean to create in such times. He was Jewish, and he changed his name from Goldstein to Guston because of the raging antisemitism he experienced, a masking, so to speak, much like the artist in the painting who performs a similar masking; adopting the guise of the dominant culture in the society he lived in. I enjoyed the focus on the red and white hands, I haven't thought about this painting in those terms before so thank you for the set of formalist concerns you presented.
@GreatArtistsSteal
2 жыл бұрын
thanks for that interesting feedback. Sorry to rly sorry to reply so late.