Peter Benson Miller Libri

The book explores the evolution and impact of Philip Guston's artistic career, particularly his celebrated works from the late 1960s and 1970s. It highlights a recent conference organized by the American Academy in Rome, featuring discussions among critics and art historians on Guston's significance and his relationship with Italian art. The collection includes diverse perspectives from established specialists and emerging scholars, as well as insights from a conversation between Robert Storr and Chuck Close. Guston's legacy remains a compelling subject for contemporary artists and scholars.

Milton Gendel: A Surreal Life traces the work of the American photographer and art critic Milton Gendel (*1918 in New York) from his affiliation with André Breton and the Surrealist exiles in New York in the forties and in China during World War II through his fertile connection to Italy, where he has lived for over sixty years. He documented Sicilian agricultural workers and market scenes and became a vital catalyst for the exchanges between American and Italian art as the Rome correspondent for ART News. His iconic portraits refer to artists such as Alberto Burri, Alexander Calder and Willem de Kooning as well as art world luminaries such as Leo Castelli and Peggy Guggenheim and writers, namely Iris Origo, or Evelyn Waugh. Reasserting Rome as a cosmopolitan cultural laboratory during the post-war period, Gendel reveals affinities to documentary photography with Surrealist roots. Exhibition schedule: Museo Carlo Bilotti, Rome, October 5, 2011-January 8, 2012 American Academy in Rome October 19-November 11, 2011

Since Philip Guston's death in 1980, his late figurative paintings and drawings have steadily reaped the acclaim they deserve--acclaim that was largely denied them during Guston's lifetime (Hilton Kramer infamously reviewed Guston as a "mandarin pretending to be a stumblebum" in a damning 1970 New York Times article). This volume reunites a selection of paintings from the Roma series, completed during Guston's residency at the American Academy in Rome in 1970-71. From early in his career, Guston had taken inspiration from Italian art, and his 1973 painting "Pantheon" features a list of Italian de Chirico, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Giotto and Tiepolo. Italian cinema (especially Fellini) and classical sculpture were also dear to his heart. The Roma works consolidate this dialogue with Italian art and culture. Diary entries published alongside the reproductions recount exchanges at the American Academy, pilgrimages to Venice, Arezzo, Sicily and Orvieto, and observations of the international cultural community in Rome.