Back View 1969

Philip Guston made this drawing, Back View, with graphite on paper in 1969. Look at the scribbly marks he uses to describe the hair, it’s almost like he’s feeling around for the form. You can see this kind of searching in a lot of Guston's work. Even though it's just a drawing, you can almost feel the weight of the graphite, the way it drags and smudges on the page. The lines are so immediate, so raw. There is a concentration of marks around the top of the head which gradually thin out as the form travels down to the shoulders. It reminds me a little bit of Picasso's simple line drawings, or maybe even some of Cy Twombly's more gestural pieces, but with Guston's own brand of melancholic humor. It’s so much about what isn’t there, about the absences, the spaces in between. And that, for me, is where the real conversation begins.