Day 341 - Philip Guston



May 15, 2023

I realize how inane and churlish it sounds when I report feeling somewhat disgruntled not to have visited my intended gallery because, it seemed, so many rooms in this wing were closed.  After all, there are many other things to see! And in fact, I could have gone to gallery 910, which was open, had I bothered to look at the museum map - I thought I knew where it was, but I was wrong.  The fact that I wasn't pleased to deviate from my intended route says something about my rigidity, I suppose. 

Gallery 917 (the first open gallery I came across) is really a hallway at the top of a flight of stairs to the second floor. It holds just one painting, a 1952 abstract by Philip Guston entitled "Painting, Number 5."  Measuring about 60 inches high and 50 inches across, it is composed of dabs of color, a background of largely horizontal strokes in flesh tones and gray broken by small, largely vertical strokes of orange, brown, red, and green.  The canvas at the bottom and top of the composition has been left bare. The whole feeling is so delicate, it reminds me of a watercolor, except that up close I can see the texture of the brushstrokes. Although the painting is clearly an abstract, it evokes for me a cityscape; the vertical strokes remind me of tall buildings. It's quite lovely, but I can't help seeing it not as art but as decor, and I wouldn't want it hanging n my home. It's just too bland for my taste.

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