Philip Guston Quotes
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In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?
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So when the 1960's came along I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening to America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything-and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue.
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I have a studio in the country - in the woods – but my paintings look more real to me than what is outdoors. You walk outside; the rocks are inert, even the clouds are inert. It makes me feel a little better. But I do have a faith that it is possible if you can move that inch.
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I got sick and tired of all that Purity! Wanted to tell stories.. Guston's quote in 1967, referring to his swift from Abstract expressionism to figurative painting
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To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.
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Painting is.. a kind of war between the moment and the pull of memory.(quote in 1959)
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But you begin to feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no reason to exist at all - or is not even possible. The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance.
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Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.
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Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe.
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The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see.
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Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.
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O’Hara was in his most non-stop way of talking, saying that the pictures put him in mind of Tiepolo Spanish wall-painter, c. 1750. Certain cupola frescoes. Suddenly I was working in an ancient building, a warehouse facing the Giudecca. The loft over the firehouse was transformed. It was filled with light reflected from the canal. quote in 1955
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Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.
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I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.
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I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over.
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I should like to paint like an man who has never seen a painting, but this man – myself – lives in a museum.
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Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls into positions that feel destined.
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Everything is possible, everything except dogma, of any kind.. ..That's what it's about. Freedom. That's the only possession an artist has - freedom to do whatever you can imagine.
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Sylvester: What about figuration in a more literal sense?
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pp. 93-94