Philip Guston’s neoexpressionist period was a long time coming. He had begun with WPA murals in 1935, embraced Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, and was painting figuratively by the 1970s. But what figures! Eyeballs, cigarettes, Klansmen, bricks. He began making prints—stark black lines on white paper, ashen landscapes of crude shoes, coats, lightbulbs, walls. In 1980, the year Guston died, the young American artist Raymond Pettibon became an unlikely successor with his sardonic drawings in black ink. Pettibon’s style is more open, less tunneling than Guston’s. He makes references to pop culture and includes phrases in his work. But he’s as politically acute as Guston, and as cutting. This exhibition places the pair’s prints side-by-side. —E.C.

Philip Guston and Raymond Pettibon
Brooke Alexander
59 Wooster St, New York, NY 10012
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