About this artwork
In the late 1960s, painter Philip Guston made a radical shift. Previously acclaimed for lush, luminous abstract works, he turned to crude, awkward renderings of often-sinister figures and objects. “I got sick and tired of that purity,” he declared. “I wanted to tell stories.” In an outpouring of figurative work near the end of his career that employed recurring imagery such as cartoonish Ku Klux Klansmen and piles of prone legs with the soles of their shoes exposed, Guston addressed sociopolitical issues as well as his own artistic conflicts. Starkly titled, Bad Times is dominated by brushy, almost pearlescent passages of paint that seem at odds with, but that also ground, a graphic scene of violence or its aftermath.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Contemporary Art
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Artist
- Philip Guston
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Title
- Bad Times
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1970
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Medium
- Oil on canvas
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Dimensions
- 182.9 × 289.6 cm (72 × 114 in.)
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Credit Line
- Bequest of Musa Guston
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Reference Number
- 1992.733
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Copyright
- © The Estate of Philip Guston
Extended information about this artwork
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