NYC, October 10, 2022

Heinz Emigholz, DE 2025, 54 min, English OV

In 2020, several museums, including the Tate Modern in London, postponed a retrospective of Philip Guston's work because some of his paintings feature masked members of the Ku Klux Klan. On this occasion, the comic artist Art Spiegelman ('Maus') gives a fascinating introduction to the early newspaper cartoon that was to have a strong influence on Guston's iconography: a movable and multi-coded set of very simple figures and patterns is able to subvert racist and sexist stereotypes. This was already the story of 'Krazy Kat', drawn by George Herriman, who nobody in the USA was allowed to know was not a "white man", and this is the story of Guston, who came from a Jewish family and, especially in his later work, dealt with topics such as the Shoah or Richard Nixon's time in office in a comic-like manner.