FEBRUARY 2004
tHE PRESAGE AND THE TRUTH
By Philip Guston and the Photographer
(US occupation soldiers arresting an Iraqi. About 9,000 Iraqis are in prisons and detention camps (Alquds Alarabi, 1/29/04).
The artist Philip Guston, during his life, realised that abstract art that both he andJackson Pollock were trying out was a dead end, disabling an artist from his historic purpose to record his life experience and thoughts. Philip Guston urged Pollock to draw back from abstract art but certain Gallery owners were making it financially worthwhile for the mute art to develop - as it did worldwide - and in the 1980s Art in America magazine admitted it had all been politically motivated. And please note the appalled horror of the political world that a Danish artist could now make a disturbing political observation. Philip Guston was ostracized by the entire "Art" world for his stand for the truth and he and his wife led a very lonely existence. He is once reported to have said, "In all my pictures I leave a little gap for my escape and for those who understand me." That he understood and presaged the unconscious motivation of the USA empire during his life that had once revealed itself as the KKK is not a surprise and that its reverse image should now appear in this order of arrest, and be largely carried out by soldiers of colour is very distressing.