Out Of Time Philip Guston and the Refiguration of Postwar American Art

Focusing on the thirty-three paintings Philip Guston exhibited at the Marborough Gallery in 1970, this title reconsiders the history of postwar American art and the conception of figuration in modern art history.

“Robert Slifkin deploys a glaring paradox—the fact that the standard art history of the 1960s largely ignores the unruly cultural phenomena that so vividly define the decade—to launch exactly the kind of book I've been hoping for. Out of Time is the work of a brave young scholar willing and able to change the terms by which a previous generation has framed the understanding of later twentieth-century art.”—Thomas Crow, author of The Rise of the Sixties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent

"Slifkin proposes nothing less than a rethinking of art historical scholarship on the late 1960s. Elegantly wielding theoretical and literary terms, Slifkin points to the complex ways in which Guston’s paintings both acknowledge and mourn the demise of action painting and the ideals that sustained it. At the same time this dazzlingly rich analysis offers a revisionist and historical account of the cultural landscape of the late 1960s."—Cécile Whiting, author of Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s

" Out of Time moves Guston’s late paintings from the periphery to the center of art production around 1970 and saturates them with period culture—the culture of the art world, to be sure, but also that of music, films, fiction, and scholarship; of Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait, Bonnie and Clyde, The Book of Daniel, Armies of the Night, The Shape of Time. The expansive viewpoint and lively writing give us a new view of Guston as an artist very much of his time but still profoundly pertinent in the 21st century."—Michael Leja, author of Reframing Abstract Expressionism and Looking Askance

“[ Out of Time is] the first major critical evaluation of Guston’s late work. Its contribution to the history of postwar American art is significant. Its style is both scholarly stimulating and enjoyable to read.”—Klaus Ottmann, Director of the Center for the Study of Modern Art and Curator at Large, The Phillips Collection

Focusing on the thirty-three paintings that Philip Guston exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery in 1970, this in-depth account reconsiders the history of postwar American art and the conception of figuration in modern art history. Through a myriad of cultural touchstones, including evidence from literary and musical vogues of the period, Robert Slifkin examines the role of history as both artistic medium and creative catalyst to Guston's practice as a painter. Slifkin employs a wealth of visual examples, archival materials, and original scholarship to situate Guston's paintings within broader artistic debates of the time, using the cultural movement of "the sixties" as its orienting foreground. This historical framework provides an interface between the notions of time in art and time in the material world. Lively and edifying, Slifkin's comprehensive text productively complicates the prescribed traditions of postwar art history and, in turn, shifts our perception of Guston and his place in the domain of modern art.