Guston in Time

In this warm and vibrant work of memoir and criticism, a young writer forges a friendship with Philip Guston, one of the most influential and controversial painters of the twentieth century.

The late work of Philip Guston has had a profound influence on painters today, but as Guston’s star has risen, it has been forgotten how scandalous these paintings, with their cartoonish imagery and almost fumbling application of paint, were initially deemed to be. The 1970 show at the Marlborough Gallery in which Guston, abandoning the delicate abstract expressionism for which he was known, revealed his new style, was critically savaged. In the aftermath of this drubbing, he retreated to his studio in Woodstock, New York—in part to nurse his wounds but, more important, to go on painting exactly as he saw fit.

Ross Feld, a young poet, novelist, and critic, was one of the rare critics to respond favorably to Guston’s late work. Guston answered with a grate