Philip Guston’s KKK Paintings: Why an Abstract Painter Returned to Figuration to Confront Racism

In 1930, Philip Guston went to work on Conspirators, a tall painting featuring a trio of Ku Klux Klan members clustered in the midst of mysterious architectural elements. Their heads were bowed, and their hands brandished clubs and other weapons. Three years later, the painting went on view in Los Angeles at the Stanley Rose bookshop. But in a cruel twist of fate, people who had donned pointed hoods similar to the ones featured in the work ended up destroying Conspirators and various other works