42. PHILIP GUSTON - A SPACE BETWEEN THE INTIMATE AND THE ABANDONED.

Philip Guston, Tate Modern - LONDON.

Philip Guston, ‘City’, 1969, Oil paint on canvas. The Guston Foundation.

From the wall of Philip Guston's easel to the infinite landscapes of his subconscious - which duly invite and reject.

Walking from room to room, the effect of retracing Guston is mesmerising - like following footsteps in snow which grow deeper as the man becomes the artist.

We see the many changes within a style, the many visual conversations and emotive sways of confidence, the trials and rewards, the tribulations and the risks which, viewed cold - seem to flush with the dreams and hopes of someone searching for himself. Reminding us all of the impossible - as the 66-year-old artist ponders at the exhibition end: 'I wish I was painting what I can now when I was 30'.

Losing elements and gaining space - how colour observed within earlier works return with personification in later paintings - renewed with a certain acceptance - As the width of the brushes increases with time, so too does the sense of freedom and immediacy, as if the time delay is narrowing to urgently communicate as the clock ticks on - speaking in a visual tone which turns from emulation to interpretation.

Ingrowing and internal, the works appear dazed yet unconfused, lighthearted yet focused - where a quivering gelatinous metropolis emerges as if from clouds of flour or icing sugar - freshly unmoulded and somehow distantly semi-translucent - as if brushing blancmange on table cloths taught over frames, using implements rummaged in kitchen draws.

A particular shade of aspic or tooth-paste-pink are semi-combined as if mixed in distraction and slathered on surfaces with a generosity of abandon - an effect which at first charms while also leaving the viewer a certain degree of nausea.

An atmosphere of cartoonish reality - where the landline rings, the neighbours argue and the sounds of the city below layer through the artist's open window - overheard in Americana colours, desperately upbeat and saturated in a platter of syrups shades which seem to dissolve to matt - thickly sweet yet tooth-achingly tempting.

Tears of the clown - distract the audience with a joke to protect from a truth which trembles with vulnerability - which the artist alone knows, and exorcises within a complex simplicity.

Guston's masterwork 'Flatlands' shocks with the heartfelt muffled thuds of a raining of objects - falling into a landscape, seemingly carpeted with snow. A spongey surface which catches each and every item with an evenness which feels unbiased even parental. Crammed into frame - a hurling of items, normally handled with care are seen in chaotic stillness - and yet, somehow viewed from the canine eye-line of the subjective - to thaw into the emotive and heartbroken - a clock's tick frozen in time - a violented moment caught-out, forever at 4:00, as the sun rises exposing a cacophony of exploded artefacts - once intimate now inanimate.

Philip Guston, ‘Flatlands’, 1970, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, USA) © The Estate of Philip Guston.

Philip Guston, Tate Modern, London - Until 25 February 2024.

Thank you: Anna Overden - Tate Modern and Neil Drabble for the recommendation.