Painting Floods: History, Witness and Public Address in Philip Guston’s Late Work

Street, Benjamin James (2024) Painting Floods: History, Witness and Public Address in Philip Guston’s Late Work. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

My thesis examines Philip Guston’s paintings and drawings between 1967 and 1976. This encompasses the moment of his transition from abstraction to a cartoonish figuration. The latter tends to dominate the literature, above all his imagery of Ku Klux Klansmen, first exhibited in 1970. The context of the postponement of the artist’s retrospective in 2020 lends urgency to my reframing of this moment. I do so by unearthing new archival material concerning Guston’s production throughout the 1970s; and by investigating concerns that are underdeveloped in the literature: principally, the significance of his engagement with historical Italian fresco painting, and the emergence of the theme of the flood. The analysis of these themes provides new frameworks for interpreting the artist’s late production and its manner of bearing witness to its time.

The first two chapters explore the artist’s initial (re)turn to figuration up to 1970; the second two consider works produced from 1971–76, in the years following his final trip to Italy. Chapter 1 restores to visibility an overlooked painting from 1969, The Deluge, which I argue recuperates Abstract Expressionist viewer dynamics as part of Guston’s intent to bear witness to contemporary violence. The second situates Guston’s drawings and paintings in relation to his encounter with mediated imagery of contemporary violence and his desire to have his work “bear witness” as a result. The third chapter examines Guston’s encounter with early modern wall painting in Italy in 1970–71 and traces the aftermath of that encounter in his exhibition of new paintings in 1974. The final chapter returns to the theme of the flood inaugurated by The Deluge and shows how Guston’s flood paintings produced from 1975 allowed him to consider the limits of representation, reflect on public address, synthesise historical material, and dramatize the witnessing of historical catastrophe.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies (former - to 2024)
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	10 Mar 2025 09:11
Last Modified:	10 Mar 2025 09:11
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98725
DOI:

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