C.B. Murphy  .:. Home

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What show did I see of Philip Guston’s work? It’s the prerogative of the amateur to neither care nor remember, however, I do remember not being particularly excited about his work. I saw it in Chicago and for some reason I thought he was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where some of my friends still teach). Even if I got all my facts wrong (and who knows, he could have been a visiting artist there) he was solidly IN MY MIND in the school of Chicago Imagism which I still revere. This school includes Roger Brown, Jim Nutt and H. C. Westermann. Given that kind of company, artists unabashedly “pro-image”, Guston’s work seemed uninteresting. Sure I could see there were social critical themes underneath (why else all the Klansmen?) but they weren’t painted in a way that shouted at you (like Diego Rivera shouts “Marxism Good!”) nor were they interesting to me as images. I didn’t even like his signature “flesh rose” or whatever it was. So, I dismissed him. Wrong!

The year was 1979. The place, Chicago. The environment, well, let’s say it was highly influenced by Laurie Anderson, the fall of the Shah, Three Mile Island, Jimmy Carter attacked by a swamp rabbit, the Unabomber, the dominance of disco music, the Soviets invade Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis, and the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” coming in at number five song for the year. Go figure (it all out).C. B. Murphy at the time was in his “industrial metal salesman by day, mad cartoonist at night” phase. He started his cartoon series in the Chicago Reader, beginning with the breakthrough “Zombie Toll Booth Collector” and the prophetic “The Difference Between a Punk and a Dork.”

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