Head and Bottle exemplifies Guston's move away from painting the hooded Klansmen in the late 1960s. He invented this lima-bean shaped Cyclops head, with no body and one giant eye, to represent the all-seeing artist. In this work, the eye scrutinizes a green bottle, studying it as if about to pick up the nearby paintbrush to render it in red paint. The year after he painted this, Guston was hospitalized with exhaustion.
Philip Guston (1913-1980) var en banebrytende kanadisk-amerikansk kunstner kjent for sin utvikling fra abstrakt ekspresjonisme til rå, figurativ kunst som utforsker rasisme, identitet og politisk satire. En nøkkelfigur i New York School.