The Necessity of Imperfection

Le résumé fourni par la source

This chapter asks why the American painter Philip Guston (1913–80) turned to Chinese Song Dynasty landscape painting (960–1279) in the 1950s and explores this in relation to the aesthetics of imperfection in art and everyday life. Guston’s desire to create works of art resonant of the feeling of life following the Second World War and revelations of the Holocaust catalysed a transition to a more abstract mode of painting. Yet, how might painting relate to violent history while retaining the hope to produce works of art? The Song Dynasty landscape painters might have provided a clue, inspiring Guston to uncover the sense of a resonating spirit. In Guston’s paintings and drawings of the 1950s, qualities of imperfection, such as openness and incompleteness, are as so many cracks through which spirit might enter, revealing through aesthetic and moral value the world as it was and had become.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.