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Phillip Guston, Lush and Forlorn

Also, the Guggenheim Museum union authorizes a strike and new findings on human DNA in cave art.

Hyperallergic

July 1, 2026 — 3 min read

What makes Phillip Guston great? In the words of Hyperallergic critic John Yau, it’s his “refusal to separate himself from the crumbling world he dwells in.” The late artist’s current exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in New York, featuring drawings and paintings spanning the mid-’60s and ’70s, brings to light lesser-known sides of his practice, such as the influence of poetry and the immense contributions of his wife, the poet Musa McKim.

In news, unionized workers at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan have voted to authorize a strike as contract negotiations enter their sixth month, with the shock and pain of last year’s layoffs still fresh.

Also today: Scholar Sarah Bond on human DNA in cave art, Natalie Haddad interviews Jack Halberstam, and ballroom Icon Andre Mizrahi Clark’s words of wisdom: “I want people to look at me and say, ‘Well, bitch, if he could do it, I know I still could do it.’”

—Valentina Di Liscia, senior editor

Philip Guston’s Lines of Poetry

Philip Guston loved poets. In 1968, after he and his wife, the artist and poet Musa McKim, and their teenage daughter moved to Woodstock, New York, he began to radically shift his work from abstraction to a cartoonish world of people and things. This change coincided with his beginning to collaborate with a close circle of poet friends, particularly Clark Coolidge, who lived nearby.

Life With P. - Philip Guston: Paintings and Drawings 1964–1978 at Hauser and Wirth brings together work from this time when he pared down his drawings to a line or two and began again. Drawing, particularly the bare line, was central to Guston’s practice. This period of questioning resonated with Coolidge, who wanted to move beyond his early poems, which were sonic and decidedly non-descriptive, without giving up his love for sound. While the exhibition focuses on the transformation that Guston’s work underwent, it calls attention to the principal support he got from McKim as his lifelong partner, inspiration, and a poet in her own right. | John Yau

Nick Cave & Bob Faust guest edit the inaugural Art Issue of Different Leaf

The beloved indie cannabis mag is relaunching with an expanded purview—covering the intersecton of art, music, fashion, and the culture of cannabis. Its first-ever Art Issue, guest edited by world-renowned artists and creative partners Cave and Faust, comes in three limited editions and is available for preorder now.

Learn more

News

Deep in the ancient caves of Spain and Portugal, new research proves for the first time that DNA can survive for millennia within the paint applied to rock walls, opening a future pathway to recovering the identities of ancient artists from thousands of years ago.
Negotiations for the second contract with the Guggenheim Museum in New York City are entering their sixth month, with an emphasis on job security after abrupt layoffs last year. Unionized staff across several departments have voted to authorize a strike if necessary.