Philip Guston
Drive, 1969
Oil on panel
67.3 x 61 cm
Drive is one of Guston’s earliest figurative works in the bold cartoonish style he became known for. It is also an early introduction to a figure of evil that he would paint often in his career — the white hooded Klansman. With these paintings, Guston sought to take on the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy and incite the question 'What it would be like to be evil?'.
The title Drive points to the car, represented as a brown murky mound that the white hooded figure sticks out of like a snow topped peak, emerging from the mud with pink fleshy hands in thick oil paint. Perhaps it also calls into question Guston’s motif and thinking at the time. What drove him to depict evil and eternalise such a violent character time and again?
Painted against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and social and political violence in America, Guston’s Ku Klux Klan paintings are regarded as his attempt to tell the story of a country that had 'run afoul of its democratic promise,' and hold a mirror up to fellow white Americans, including himself, about systemic racism.
As Craig Burnett, author of ‘Philip Guston: The Studio’ (2014/2020), wrote in a Study of the work for DRAF 'What makes Drive a remarkable painting is how rough and personal it is: it’s a mumbled prayer, damp and heartfelt. In this little icon, Guston imagined himself emerging from the earth — half monster, half artist — and plotting a course for the rest of his life.'