In commenting on his hooded figures, Guston stated in 1978, ``They are self-portraits. I perceive myself as being behind a hood. In the new series of 'hoods' my attempt was really not to illustrate, to do pictures of the KKK, as I had done earlier. The idea of evil fascinated me, and rather like Isaac Babel who had joined the Cossacks, lived with them and written stories about them, I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan. What would it be like to be evil? To plan and plot. Then I started conceiving an imaginary city being overtaken by the Klan. I was like a movie director. I couldn't wait, I had hundreds of pictures in mind and when I left the studio I would make notes to myself, memos. `Put them all around the table eating, drinking beer.' Ideas and feelings kept coming so fast; I couldn't stop, I was sitting on the crest of a wave' (Philip Guston: Paintings 1969-1980, London, 1982, p. 52).