(Montreal, Québec, 1913 - 1980, Woodstock, New York)
1980
Lithograph on paper
30 1/2 x 40 1/2 in. (77.5 x 102.9 cm)
Collection of the Akron Art Museum
Gift of David Cooper
1991.118
'Sea' is one of a series of lithographs Guston made just prior to his death. The images, which are crudely but capably drawn, featured objects from the artist’s studio or fantastic figures, as in this composition. The grotesque, noseless heads with outsized eyes are common in Guston’s later art. Here they appear to be foundering in the water, but close to the salvation of land. Two fingers emerge from the water holding a cigarette, an allusion to the artist’s ambivalent feelings of pleasure in and guilt over smoking.