Philip Guston Quotes

Quotes about:

• Studio Ghosts: When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out.

  Philip Guston

  Inspirational, Teacher, Art

  62 Copy quote

• Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.

  Philip Guston

  Magic, Pieces, Painting

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.278, Univ of California Press

  57 Copy quote

• Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.

  Philip Guston

  Art, Frustration, Satisfaction

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.54, Univ of California Press

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• No good to paint in the head - what happens is what happens when you put the paint down - you can only hope that you are alert - ready - to see. What joy it is for paint to become a thing - a being. Believe in this miracle - it is your only hope. To will this transformation is not possible. Only a slow maturation can prepare the hand and eye to become quicker than ever. Ideas about art don't matter. They collapse anyway in front of the painting.

  Philip Guston

  Art, Believe, Eye

  4 Copy quote

• You know, comments about style always seem strange to me - 'why do you work in this style, or in that style' - as if you had a choice in the matter... What you're doing is trying to stay alive and continue and not die.

  Philip Guston

  Choices, Style, Trying

  23 Copy quote

• Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. 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.

  Philip Guston

  Memories, Artist, Magic

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.278, Univ of California Press

  22 Copy quote

• We are image-makers and image-ridden... We work until we vanish.

  Philip Guston

  Artist, Makers

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Philip Guston

  Heart, Hands, Imagination

  Kim Sichel, Philip Guston (1994). “Philip Guston, 1975-1980: Private and Public Battles”, University of Washington Press

  23 Copy quote

• I go to the studio everyday because one day I may go and the Angel will be there. What if I don't go and the Angel comes?

  Philip Guston

  Angel, What If, Everyday

  10 Copy quote

• There's some mysterious process at work here, which I don't even want to understand.

  Philip Guston

  Serendipity, Want, Mysterious

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Philip Guston

  Moving, Magic, Mind

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.278, Univ of California Press

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  11 Copy quote

• To will a new form is unacceptable, because will builds distortion. Desire, too, is incomplete and arbitrary. These strategies, however intimate they might become, must especially be removed to clear the way for something else.

  Philip Guston

  Desire, Arbitrary, Might

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

  Philip Guston

  Paint, Possessing

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.10, Univ of California Press

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  Philip Guston

  Fall, Air, Long

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.10, Univ of California Press

  19 Copy quote

• Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.

  Philip Guston

  Excellence, Looks, Painting

  15 Copy quote

• Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.

  Philip Guston

  Miracle, Peculiar, Needs

  Kim Sichel, Philip Guston (1994). “Philip Guston, 1975-1980: Private and Public Battles”, University of Washington Press

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• Where do you put a form? It will move all around, bellow out and shrink, and sometimes it winds up where it was in the first place. But at the end it feels different, and it had to make the voyage. I am a moralist and cannot accept what has not been paid for, or a form that has not been lived through.

  Philip Guston

  Moving, Wind, Different

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.54, Univ of California Press

  9 Copy quote

• Probably the most potent desire for a painter, an image-maker, is to see it. To see what the mind can think and imagine, to realize it for oneself, through oneself, as concretely as possible.

  Philip Guston

  Thinking, Mind, Vision

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.281, Univ of California Press

  10 Copy quote

• To paint is always to start at the beginning again, yet being unable to avoid the familiar arguments about what you see yourself painting.

  Philip Guston

  Painting, Argument, Begin Again

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

  12 Copy quote

• There is something mysterious in this work that I do not ever what to discover.

  Philip Guston

  Mysterious, Painting

  7 Copy quote

• There comes a point when the paint doesn't feel like paint. I don't know why. Some mysterious thing happens. I think you have all experienced it... What counts is that the paint should really disappear, otherwise it's craft.

  Philip Guston

  Thinking, Mysterious Things, Crafts

  "Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics". Book edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York, p. 67, quoting 'transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow (1966), 1990.

  4 Copy quote

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