tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34419451.post116568463976798764..comments2022-11-15T09:46:30.929-05:00Comments on Burn Your Eyes Clean: I remember falling asleep during a Philip Guston film.Wil Murrayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07755137477149548822noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34419451.post-1165694748751311532006-12-09T15:05:00.000-05:002006-12-09T15:05:00.000-05:00I missed a Guston retro in New York. I think it wa...I missed a Guston retro in New York. I think it was at the Met. I remember there was a Bruegel exhibit on the first floor of whatever art building it was, and I looked at that with Gabi, and then I left to wander around. I've seen the same movie. Before it, I knew nothing about Guston except seeing a few of the 'hooded' paintings. I had erected a myth about him... a compulsive, obsessive painter, an angry iconoclast who couldn't paint formally... an outsider. Then I see this movie and he's like a trend following Dad, and I'm like, well, fuck. Remember hating much of what he said, for some reason. Also, many of the paintings were plainly bad after you see a bunch of them at once. The painting that 'made' him seems entirely based on a cheap joke. But then, that might just be a false understanding on my part, because I wasn't around to experience the 'impact'. I've had talks with older people about Guston, and they say the effect was enormous. <BR/><BR/>I think you are right about Guston and illustrators, but also he's taken on by far too many. I like a lot of this stuff, but maybe not all of it: Marc Bell seems silly. D.T. Sandlin, again...<BR/><BR/>Anyway, interested that you don't like Guston, makes me feel better about it.<BR/><BR/>PS Made a fool of myself last night at a reading by poet Robin Blaser. Truth is Wil, I don't know shit about Canlit, less about Canadian Art (I know what I like in lit and art, but haven't acquainted myself with nationality at the forefront of my mind) and I know even less about the politics... But Blaser's early essays are amazing, and his reading last night was incredible, considering the man's life, and abstractly, being around a 'community' of artists and writers like assembled last night was sort of touching, nostalgic, even if I didn't know who anyone was...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com