Philip Guston (American, born Canada, 1913-1980). <em>Red Cloth</em>, 1976. Oil on canvas, 78 x 105 1/2 in. (198.1 x 268 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Musa Guston, 1992.211.2. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1992.211.2_PS9.jpg)

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Philip Guston (American, born Canada, 1913-1980). Red Cloth, 1976. Oil on canvas, 78 x 105 1/2 in. (198.1 x 268 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Musa Guston, 1992.211.2. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1992.211.2_PS9.jpg)

Red Cloth

Philip Guston

Contemporary Art

On View: American Art Galleries, 5th Floor, Beyond Borders and Boundaries, 20th and 21st Centuries

In the mid-1960s Philip Guston made a radical shift from lyrical abstraction to a cartoonlike style that reimagined scenes of historic brutality. In Red Cloth, Guston reckons with images from the Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and murder of Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime during World War II. Illuminated by a single naked light bulb, the severed legs and boots recall the mounds of shoes that the Allied troops found in 1945 at the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen. A brilliant vermillion tapestry held aloft by two hands, which reference Manus Dei, or the Hand of God, an ancient Judeo-Christian motif, offsets the barren room. In Guston’s imaginative narrative, God’s intervention cannot stop the horrors of genocide.

ARTIST Philip Guston, American, born Canada, 1913-1980

MEDIUM Oil on canvas

DATES 1976

DIMENSIONS 78 x 105 1/2 in. (198.1 x 268 cm) (show scale)

MARKINGS Paper label attached to crossbar, left half, "49. RED CLOTH 1976 78 x 105 1/2"

SIGNATURE Upper left verso: PHILIP GUSTON/"RED CLOTH" 1976 OIL ON CANVAS/78 x 105 1/2"

COLLECTIONS Contemporary Art

ACCESSION NUMBER 1992.211.2

CREDIT LINE Bequest of Musa Guston

MUSEUM LOCATION This item is on view in American Art Galleries, 5th Floor, Beyond Borders and Boundaries, 20th and 21st Centuries

CAPTION Philip Guston (American, born Canada, 1913-1980). Red Cloth, 1976. Oil on canvas, 78 x 105 1/2 in. (198.1 x 268 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Musa Guston, 1992.211.2. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1992.211.2_PS9.jpg)

IMAGE overall, 1992.211.2_PS9.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2013

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