Philip Guston returns to Paris with an exhibition that highlights the corrosive power of satire and the courage of figuration in an era dominated by abstraction. The American artist, a leading figure in Abstract Expressionism, chose in the 1970s to break with his Informel style to address the political and social realities of the time, creating grotesque and ironic images that spared no one. The exhibition, titled The Irony of History, brings together approximately seventy-five works, including paintings, drawings, engravings, and a film, with a central section dedicated to the famous Nixon Drawings. This series of works is inspired by Philip Roth's satirical novel Our Gang, in which Guston caricatures the then-president of the United States and his entourage. Simplified lines, childlike figures, and cartoonish touches become the tools to expose authority, racism, and the excesses of a conflict-ridden America. This return to figuration was perceived as a scandal: many critics and colleagues failed to understand the breakthrough of an artist who had achieved success with abstract painting. Yet it was precisely from this choice that a new language was born, combining the weight of history with the register of black humor, personal melancholy with political critique. The works on display demonstrate the constant tension between the grotesqueness of caricature and the expressive power of painting, revealing an artist who engaged in an ideal dialogue with figures such as Picasso and Grosz, but also with the tradition of literary satire of Kafka and Gogol. Curated by Didier Ottinger and Joanne Snrech, the exhibition restores Guston's value as a moral voice of the twentieth century, capable of transforming painting into a tool of cultural resistance. Thanks to loans from the Philip Guston Foundation and the support of his daughter Musa Mayer, the Parisian public can fully rediscover the radical nature of a research that continues to question the relationship between art, history, and the artist's responsibility.
