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Philip Guston

(Montreal, Québec, 1913 - 1980, Woodstock, New York)

Sea

1980

Lithograph on paper

30 1/2 x 40 1/2 in. (77.5 x 102.9 cm)

Collection of the Akron Art Museum

Gift of David Cooper

1991.118

More Information

'Sea' is one of a series of lithographs Guston made just prior to his death. The images, which are crudely but capably drawn, featured objects from the artist’s studio or fantastic figures, as in this composition. The grotesque, noseless heads with outsized eyes are common in Guston’s later art. Here they appear to be foundering in the water, but close to the salvation of land. Two fingers emerge from the water holding a cigarette, an allusion to the artist’s ambivalent feelings of pleasure in and guilt over smoking.

Keywords
Drawings
Eye
Water
Head
Line