"Pictures should tell stories," Guston wrote around 1970. This certainly holds true for the paintings he made in the final months of his life, but their stories are elliptical and their methods unconventional. These works both feature strange, disconcerting "pile-ups," to use the artist’s word, of disjointed part-objects. In this one a hastily constructed contraption whose identity and purpose are ambiguous appear. Inside it appears a secondary image—a painting within the painting—of a sunset or sunrise. In another, a pair of rubbery legs coils improbably around two ladders. Especially unsettling is the confusion between the organic and inorganic: what is human appears inhuman, while the mechanical looks all too bodily.
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the artist, Woodstock, N. Y. (d. 1980); his widow, Musa Guston, Woodstock, N. Y. (1980–d. 1992); their daughter, Musa Guston Mayer, New York (from 1992; her promised gift to MMA)
Washington, D.C. Phillips Collection. "Philip Guston: 1980 / The Last Works," March 21–May 24, 1981, no. 21.
Cleveland Museum of Art. "Philip Guston: 1980 / The Last Works," June 6–September 13, 1981, no. 21.
Pittsburgh. Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute. "Philip Guston: 1980 / The Last Works," October 10, 1981–January 3, 1982, no. 21.
New York. David McKee Gallery. "Philip Guston: 1980 / The Last Works," January 12–February 12, 1982, no catalogue.
Cambridge, Mass. Hayden Gallery. "Philip Guston: The Last Works Paintings and Drawings 1979–1980," October 13–November 25, 1984, no catalogue.
Greenville, S.C. Greenville County Museum of Art. "Philip Guston," February 11–April 6, 1986, unnumbered cat. (lent by the estate of Philip Guston; courtesy of The David McKee Gallery, New York).
Raleigh. North Carolina Museum of Art. "Philip Guston," May 17–July 27, 1986, unnumbered cat.
Bilbao. Sala Rekalde. "Philip Guston: La Raiz del Dibujo / Roots of Drawing," May 11–June 30, 1993, no. 111 (as "Sin título (Ocaso) [Untitled (Sunset)]," lent by a private collection).
Les Sables d'Olonne, France. Musee de l'Abbaye Sainte-Croix. "Philip Guston (1913-1980): Oeuvres sur papier 1975-1980," June 24–September 30, 1995, unnumbered cat. (one of nos. 10–12, 14, 16, 20, or 28; lent by Succession Philip Guston, Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York, ill. np).
Easton, Penn. Williams Center for the Arts. "Philip Guston: The Last Works," April 9–May 6, 1998, unnumbered cat. (fig. 7; lent by The Estate of Philip Guston. Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York).
Venice. Gallerie dell'Accademia. "Philip Guston and the Poets," May 10–September 3, 2017, unnumbered cat. (p. 108; lent by a private collection).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Philip Guston: What Kind of Man Am I?," May 25–August 1, 2023, no catalogue (lent by Musa Guston Mayer).
Robert Saltonstall Mattison. Philip Guston: The Last Works. Ed. Stevie O. Daniels. Exh. cat., Williams Center for the Arts. Easton, Penn., 1998, pp. 9, 15, fig. 7 (color).
Michael Semff, ed. Philip Guston: Acryl auf Papier. Letzte Arbeiten. Exh. cat., Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München. Munich, 2015, p. 63, ill. p. 51 (color), calls it "Untitled (Sunset)".
Robert Storr. Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting. London, 2020, no. 254, ill. p. 230 (color).
The Guston Foundation, ed. Catalogue Raisonné. Online resource [gustoncrllc.org/home/catalogue_raisonne], 2024–25 (accessed), no. P80.017, ill. (color).
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