Philip Guston Quotes About Canvas

Quotes about: Canvas

• 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.

  Philip Guston

  Art, Self, Judging

  'ARTnews Annual', Artnews Associates., October 1966.

• When I see people making 'abstract' painting, I think it's just a dialogue and a dialogue isn't enough. That is to say, there is you painting and this canvas. I think there has to be a third thing; it has to be a trialogue.

  Philip Guston

  Thinking, People, Abstract Painting

• Sometimes I scrape off a lot. You have on the floor, like cow dung in the field, this big glob of paint... and it's just a lot of inert matter, inert paint. Then I look back at the canvas, and it's not inert - it's active, moving and living.

  Philip Guston

  Moving, Looks, Cows

• The canvas you are working on modifies the previous ones in an unending, baffling chain which never seems to finish. What sympathy is demanded of the viewer? He is asked to 'see' the future links.

  Philip Guston

  Finishing, Links, Canvas

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.53, Univ of California Press

• The things I felt... about certain painters of the past that... inspired me, like Cezanne and Manet... that complete losing of oneself in the work to such an extent that the work itself... felt as if a living organism was posited there on the canvas, on this surface... That's truly... the act of creation.

  Philip Guston

  Past, Cezanne, Losing

• That's what I mean by something grips in a canvas. The moment that happens you are then sucked into the whole thing. Like some kind of rhythm.

  Philip Guston

  Mean, Kind, Canvas

  "Transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966". "Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics" by Clifford Ross, p. 67, 1990.

• The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance.

  Philip Guston

  Art, Judging, Trials

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.53, Univ of California Press

• I feel more as if I'm shaping something with my hands. I feel as if I've always wanted to get to that state. Like a blind man in a dark room had some clay, what would he make? I end up with 2 or 3 forms on a canvas, but it gets very physical for me.

  Philip Guston

  Dark, Men, Hands

  "Transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966". "Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics" by Clifford Ross, pp. 73-75, 1990.

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