Art & Creativity Quote by Philip Guston

"I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere"

Philip Guston, Artist

About this Quote

Guston’s line lands like a refusal to play the critic’s game. “I don’t know what a painting is” isn’t faux-modesty; it’s a deliberate sabotage of the idea that painting has a stable definition, a single job description, or a clean pedigree. Coming from an artist who moved from social realism to Abstract Expressionism and then detonated expectations with his late, cartoonish figures, the statement reads as a manifesto for artistic mutiny: painting isn’t a category, it’s a pressure point.

The key move is how he shifts the origin story away from “painting itself.” He treats the urge to paint as an involuntary spark, not a cultivated theory. That’s a quiet rebuke to modernist gatekeeping, the kind that polices what “counts” as serious form. In Guston’s world, the impulse can be set off by “things, thoughts, a memory, sensations” - messy inputs that sound closer to lived experience than to studio formalism. It’s also an insistence on permeability: painting isn’t sealed off from the noise of the world; it metabolizes it.

Subtextually, he’s protecting mystery as a working method. If you can fully account for why you paint, you’re already halfway to making illustrations of your own explanations. Guston keeps the source deliberately promiscuous - “anything and anywhere” - to defend painting as a site of risk, where the next image can arrive from an uncomfortable place and still demand to be made.

Quote Details

Topic	Art
Source	Verified source: Philip Guston Talking (Philip Guston, 1978)ISBN: 9780854880591 Text match: 98.41% Provider: Cross-Reference Evidence: I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere, a trifle, some detail observed, wondered about and, naturally from the previous painting. (Lecture delivered at the University of Minnesota in March 1978; first published in Philip Guston: Paintings 1969-1980 (1982), pp. 49-56; quote appears on p. 53). The quote is verifiable as Philip Guston's own words from a lecture/talk titled 'Philip Guston Talking,' given at the University of Minnesota in March 1978. The strongest publication evidence located says this lecture was first published in the exhibition catalogue Philip Guston: Paintings 1969-1980 (Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1982), pages 49-56. A transcription of the talk preserves the passage and shows that the commonly circulated quote is usually truncated; the full sentence continues after 'anywhere.' I did not find evidence of an earlier printed publication before the 1982 Whitechapel catalogue, so the earliest currently verified publication is 1982, while the earliest verified speaking date is March 1978. Other candidates (1) Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art (Kristine Stiles, 1996) compilation95.5% ... I don't know what a painting is ; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint ? It might be things , thought...
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