Is Phillip Guston a figurative artist? I am unsure and I believe he was too. There are dramatic differences between his paintings and those of Giotto. Pink is not a logical choice of the Quattrocento artist. You see Guston defines figuration as the isolation of a single image; and if the painting of an image is legible to a naked viewer, then there is certainly a degree of figuration involved within the relationship between the artist and his subject. I believe Guston attempts to engage with this version of figuration drawing on a catalogue of iconography which simultaneously maintains an indexical bond to its subject, while also refusing to attach itself as a representation of the object is ‘appears’ to be. They are more like object-doubles. Not signs referring elsewhere but the object and nothing more, stitched to the canvas as a cloying oil slick. It is a complicated and difficult relationship, one of surrogates and imitation. The love-affair stretched and fractured. It was the 60’s, the photograph was abundant and Guston could still manage to isolate his images ready for painting. I pose the question to my contemporary: our images now exist among a vast mob of promiscuous copies; how can one extract a single image from such an active system of circulation? Every image will at any point always relate to its offspring, all have been inbred with their sibling. How, if at all can one isolate an image? And so is it worth even trying for the ‘figuration’ Guston defines?