Philip Guston: Letter

Sunday—Sept. '78

Thoughts (or Advice to myself)

Ross,—So it is truly a bitter comedy that is being played out now—A 'Painting" which is like "real" life—as it is lived from hour to hour, day to day, cannot be a picture! It is an impossibility! Feelings change—keep shifting—it is a fantasy the mind makes, the attempt to fix—it could be like accepting a dogma of some kind—of belief. But it won't stay still—remains docile—. One cannot tame anything into docility with oneself as the master—be a lion tamer?—that is razzle-dazzle, that's circus. Fool the eye.

Sometimes I spread out all over the canvas, the rectangle of action, and try to fix—make the momentary "balance & unbalance" into a form that I can look at—"live with"—and because of its very instability and precarious condition I can. I did this last week. Now, this week, in reverse. I made a huge & TOWERING vast rock—with platforms—ledges, for my forms to be_ on—and to play out their private drama. A Theater— maybe? A STAGE?

This will remain for a while—this series.—Of course they needed platforms—steps—to act it out. But then the rock itself became precarious, shaky and wouldn't stay still—it, too, participates in the changing instability of everything. So even when I want & need to make something solid—-just there—like a Pyramid—it starts shaking and the whole thing—the rock as well as the forms are swarming—moving in all directions at once—As if there were no possibility of any kind of order—that we know of, or have seen before. If we are weak, we distrust it?

So, if things are moving, changing so rapidly, it is folly to hold—to fix—Yet the attempt must exist—& be made. Why?

If I think of the forms as on a surface, on a flat plane—if I give in to the limitations of the plane, its restrictions, and accept its orders, OBEY, and follow through to a fixation, one inevitably ends with a "nothing"—an emptiness, which is similar, I think, to the flatness of a belief. A PURITY. This is a fantasy I cannot believe in, for I then become tedious and boring to myself-—reminding myself, remembering what I thought or felt yesterday—what the rules are, or were—Here is where it all tumbles and collapses! The image then becomes "a picture"—a sign—an icon—and even though it can be a "significant" and deeply felt "nothing" (OR A THOUGHT) it does soon pall. And when I go to the other extreme and resist the acceptance of the flat plane of painting—and be perverse and go against the rules, so to say, my image is like a hunk of sculpture—solid—a "thing" in space—When I am too resolute—firm—in this resistance to the flat—the image soon palls, too, and becomes also fantasy, depending too much on illusions. And this chunk of a "thing" is painful—stays in the gut. Either way, we are still in the old & familiar wax-works museum.

What, then, is there to do—where, then, is there to move? Only the most feared is left. To create a living thing—as it lives—and to see it! Impossible! (It is somehow evil to make a Golem, but to make a living "thing?") That is a far greater evil—(also "unnecessary").

So, to abandon yourself to the unknown of the doing—is all that's left, only the reflection of the passing of time—but sharply visible—made so—as this act of making is lived out.— And— then you move into the next, like a strange and new clock, warping Time into becoming a frightening new other place, a land in which there is no rock and no "nothing." What is there—then? There is only the next doing which leads only to the next doing. A lifetime of doing?

Nerves. The nervousness of the maker is what one has—very little else—and even the "else" is rancid,—like old & dried sea¬weed clinging on.

Advice to myself—
Do not make laws.
Do not form habits.
You do not possess a way—
You do not possess a style—
You have nothing finally but some "mysterious" urge—to use the stuff—the matter.

The Buddhists write— "When you walk, walk—When you sit, sit—but know that you are walking—know that you are sitting."

But I am not a Buddhist—even that is denied me. My spirit needs matter—a medium—which resists the peaceful—balanced resolution of forms and spaces. I need a medium through which I can show myself-—to myself-—concretely—tangibly—what I am—what my condition is. Unlike a monk, my self or mind-self is not my medium—/ cannot contemplate myself into myself. I don't know. It could be that the Buddhist's way is an ultimate state which I have not reached. I am not certain if this is true. L doubt it. Yet could it be that it is vain—-for the self to show itself to the self, and also know that this is what is being done, as it is being done, & in such a way that it cannot stop this being done? Corporeal. Fleshly. Is this what it is then, to be an artist? It is a question of some magnitude.

From: Guston in Time by Ross Feld