A New Figuration: Philip Guston at Boston University

Join us on Tuesday, February 25, 2025, at 7 PM for an engaging lecture with art historian Dr. Ben Street, exploring the artist, former Boston University faculty member, and 1970 honorary degree recipient, Philip Guston. The lecture will explore Guston’s shift from abstraction to figuration through the lens of his 1974 BU exhibition, along with examining his ties to BU’s Jewish Boston Expressionist faculty who shared with Guston a deep love for Italian painting and frescoes.

The story of Philip Guston's conversion from abstraction into cartoonish figuration around 1970 has been much discussed, and the moment of that late work's first public appearance (at Marlborough Gallery, New York, in October 1970) has tended to overshadow the remainder of the artist's highly prolific and complex final decade. Overlooked in this narrative is Guston's relationship with artists and institutions in Boston. He was employed as a visiting lecturer at Boston University between 1973-78, and found a collegiate atmosphere in the city among Boston’s poets and BU’s Boston Expressionist painters, who like him, made use of a representational language that delved into the history of European painting and addressed Jewish spiritual and cultural themes.

This talk will focus on Guston’s 1974 exhibition, New Paintings, at Boston University, his first after the Marlborough Gallery show and also his first following his final, important visit to Italy and residency in Rome in 1970-1. As Dr. Street reveals in his research, his exhibition showcased the importance of Guston's encounter with trecento and quattrocento fresco cycles seen in Italy. The talk will provide a new perspective on the motivations for Guston’s later and highly influential practice, which was sustained and supported at BU and by his relationship with Boston's artistic culture.

Following Dr. Street’s lecture, Boston University School of Visual Arts Associate Professor of Painting Dana Clancy will join him on stage for an open conversation that draws from Clancy’s research into Guston and the history of the School while serving as SVA Director. Clancy will discuss the context of Guston’s teaching at BU and the broader context of his artistic legacy with Dr. Street.

LIVESTREAM OPTION

If you are unable to attend in person at 808 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA; we invite you to join virtually. Registration for the livestream is required, here: https://bostonu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8-F6eKUyRiKuvbVThlxZZQ.

BIOS

About Dr. Ben Street
Dr. Ben Street is an art historian, educator and the author of numerous books, including "How to Enjoy Art" (Yale, 2021) and the award-winning children's book "How to be an Art Rebel" (Thames and Hudson, 2021). His 2024 doctoral thesis, at the University of East Anglia, UK, was on Philip Guston's late work and its engagement with historical Italian art. He has been a lecturer and educator for the National Gallery, Tate, Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and is a contributing writer to Art Review, Apollo and the Times Literary Supplement.

About Dana Clancy
Dana Clancy is associate professor of art (Painting) at Boston University School of Visual Arts. She is represented by Alpha Gallery, Boston and has had solo exhibitions there, at the Danforth Museum of Art, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Babson College, Laconia Gallery, Harvard University Medical School, and BU, and has exhibited in group exhibitions nationally and in Italy, where she has also curated and taught. Clancy has been the recipient of a St. Botolph Club Foundation Award, a grant from the Artists Resource Trust, a Clowes Award residency to the Vermont Studio Center, residency at Yaddo and Threewalls gallery in Chicago, and at Camac Centre d’Art in France (with a Fondation Tenot award). Her work has been published in 100 Boston Painters and with New American Paintings several times. She currently serves on the Board of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.

This event is organized by Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts and is supported by a grant from the Jewish Cultural Endowment at Boston University.

Host or Publisher Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts