Transition

Philip Guston made a name for himself as an abstract expressionist, but by the late 1960s he had grown weary of ​“all that purity.” He began creating crudely rendered and emotionally charged paintings filled with cartoony figures and mundane objects. The artist’s shift in creative practice, referenced in this work’s title, was not a slow and graceful transition but an abrupt right turn. Transition shows Guston hiding behind a canvas, as if taking refuge from the blast of bad press he received after his new work was shown in 1970. A tiny, clownish doorway suggests a move from one place to another, while the clock near the center points to the artist’s canvas, as if ticking away the time Guston had left to paint. At once comic and disturbing, the painting is a surreal mix of allegorical and personal references.