Philip Guston: Edge Of Town

Philip Guston’s Edge of Town—painted in 1969—illustrates our theme.


“In this new dream of violence—these are self-portraits.

I feel like Isaac Babel with his Cossacks, as if I were living with the Klan.

What do they do afterwards—or before?

What would it be like to be evil?

Why couldn’t some be artists—and paint one another?”



Digital Image © 2008 Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.