Along with De Kooning, Guston was a primary influence for me as a young art and art-history student. And it was back in those days that I found and bought this excellent book, which remains (to my knowledge) the most easily found and accessibly written study of this under-appreciated artist.
Like de Kooning there's something of the angst-ridden existentialist about Guston. Both artists re-invented themselves, used figuration when it was deemed to have become redundant, and were, at points in their careers, associated with the New York 'new school' that also evolved the tag 'abstract expressionism'.
As another reviewer has pointed out, the focus in this book is predominantly on Guston's final figurative phase, with less emphasis on his early work and his mid career abstractions (some of the latter are amongst my personal favourites), but most of the important ground is adequately covered, and the book is both well and lavishly illustrated, with decent-quality and reasonable-sized reproductions. His ultimate style and subject is fascinating, and not easy going, being visually borderline ugly, whilst remaining unambiguously 'painterly', and emphasising the angst-ridden view of humanity he evidently had.
A fascinating companion to this is Night Studio, the memoirs of Guston's daughter, Musa. Rather like Ed Harris' Pollock movie, Night Studio throws an interesting if not very flattering light on 'the artistic type', revealing how life in their orbit was anything but easy.
