Philip Guston

Cigar

Guston’s hooded, cigar-smoking character is at once ominous and whimsical, appearing in a number of his later works. For decades, Guston created works of Abstract Expressionism. The graphic, figurative style of Cigar is a revolution in the artist’s technique. However, echoes of his earlier paintings are noticeable in this image’s expressive brushwork. This simple seeming figure is in fact complex, and charged with personal meaning.

Cigar recalls the Ku Klux Klan members that the artist saw in the Southern California of his youth, and Guston subverts the terror that they inspired with this buffoonish lampoon of human vice. The hooded figure may also be a critical examination of the artist’s self-image.

Guston was a heavy drinker and smoker who lamented, “I perceive myself as being behind a hood.”