Night Studio

Featuring a new afterword by the author, this richly illustrated new edition of Musa Mayer’s critically acclaimed memoir of her father Philip Guston is both a deeply personal account of growing up in the shadow of a great artist and a daughter’s quest to better understand her father.

A new edition of this classic, intimate memoir by Philip Guston’s daughter, Musa Mayer, with a new afterword. Beginning as a muralist in the 1930s, Philip Guston (1913–1980) embraced the lyrical vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism after his move to the East Coast. Following an artistic crisis in the mid-60s, his return to figuration—focusing first on things of ordinary life, later evolving to the enigmatic and iconic cartoonlike forms for which he is now best known—shook the art world. Night Studio is both a deeply personal account of growing up in the shadow of a great artist and a daughter’s quest to better understand her father, based on letters, notes, and interviews. This richly illustrated new edition is complemented by Mayer’s reflections on the recent reception of Guston’s work and the afterlife of her memoir, first published to critical acclaim in 1988.

Author Biography

Musa Mayer has curated exhibitions in New York, Hong Kong, London, and Los Angeles. Her other books include Examining Myself: One Woman’s Story of Breast Cancer (1994).