Trenton Doyle Hancock, “Schlep and Screw, Knowledge Rental Pawn Exchange Service” (2017), acrylic and mixed media on canvas (image courtesy the Jewish Museum)

Philip Guston, an Ashkenazi Jew, and Trenton Doyle Hancock, a Black artist with a strict Southern Christian upbringing, came from vastly different backgrounds. But a current show at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan reveals that their perspectives and sensibilities blend seamlessly. Both were maligned for their figurative, comic book-influenced styles: Guston by the elite art world that was scandalized by his abandonment of abstraction for figuration, and Doyle Hancock by the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when his mother burned his collection of Garbage Pail Kids cards and Dungeons and Dragons materials, believing that she was saving him from eternal damnation. In fact, when Doyle Hancock first came into contact with Guston, he had recently found the freedom he needed at college, away from his stringent home life, to explore new worlds of art. He told Hyperallergic that, at the time, he saw Guston “as another comic book artist.” As he honed his craft to become an editorial cartoon illustrator, he felt a kinship with Guston’s zany caricatures — and soon saw how he could continue his legacy of using comedic aesthetics to highlight the darkest aspects of American racism.

Philip Guston, “The Studio” (1969), oil on canvas (© The Estate of Philip Guston; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, promised gift of Musa Mayer; image courtesy The Jewish Museum)

Both also confronted white supremacy in various ways throughout their lives: Guston, a proud antifascist, lived through the KKK’s reign of terror in Los Angeles; Doyle Hancock would learn that the fairgrounds of his home in Paris, Texas, the place of many happy childhood memories, were once crowded with onlookers who craned their necks to view the lynching of a teenage Black boy. Further, both question if they themselves are complicit: Guston through his depiction of himself as an artist wearing the Klan hood, and Doyle Hancock through his host of surreal characters who are simultaneously perpetrators and victims of supremacy culture.
In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian and Trenton Doyle Hancock come together with poet and critic John Yau, who has been writing about Guston for decades. With his deep knowledge of Guston’s life and work, Yau illuminates what almost seems like a cosmic connection between the two artists.

Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode is also available with images of the artwork on YouTube.

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