Philip Guston's Courtyard (1969) centers two of the American artist's iconic hooded figures facing off under a clock in a space defined only by a brick wall. Paired down to its simplest elements, Guston's narratives have been heralded for forefronting concerns of the Civil Rights Movement. His most celebrated compositions are founded in a politicized and historic return to figuration after a period of abstraction during the 1960s, recalling his earlier work producing murals for the Works Progress Administration, an agency created under President Roosevelt's New Deal. At a time of massive internal upheaval in the United States while under the shadow of the Vietnam War, Guston's work suggested that to combat inequality, its perpetrators had to be clearly identified.