Poor Richard by Philip Guston - (Paperback)

About the Book

"Inspired by the life and career of Richard Nixon (especially his rapprochement with China), this volume reproduces 72 satirical, imaginative drawings also featuring Henry Kissinger, Spiro Agnew, and John Mitchell, and an original title page, all created by Guston in 1971. Conceived as a book, the drawings were unpublished during the artist's lifetime (1913-1980) and not exhibited until September 2001 in New York. Here for the first time they are brought together not in the context of an exhibition catalogue, but as the graphic novel they were meant to be. Four decades after Guston's death, these drawings are as provocative and timely as ever"--

Book Synopsis

Philip Guston's legendary, prescient political satire of Richard Nixon

In the summer of 1971--two years before the Watergate hearings--Richard Nixon was an incumbent whose grip on power was being tested by the Pentagon Papers. Inspired in part by the work of his friend Philip Roth, who had just finished the novel Our Gang, Philip Guston began drawing the object of his political anger and despair--Richard Nixon, transformed into the character "Poor Richard," rendered with a distinctively phallic nose and scrotal jowls, and accompanied by henchmen Spiro Agnew, John Mitchell, and Henry Kissinger.

Guston carefully sequenced the drawings in 1971 and planned to publish them as a book, even designing an original title page. But he held back, and the images were never released during his lifetime; only in 2001 were they first exhibited, accompanied by a publication of the series from the University of Chicago Press by Debra Bricker Balken. Today, as we face yet another moment of presidential crisis and global turmoil, Poor Richard is more relevant than ever.

Poor Richard by Philip Guston brings Guston's series back into print. Following Guston's own sequencing, layout and original title page from 1971, Poor Richard by Philip Guston presents this shockingly fresh, delightfully profane series, with beautiful new reproductions. The publication marks the promised gift of these 73 drawings by The Guston Foundation to the National Gallery of Art, where they will be preserved and studied as a monument of contemporary satirical art and virtuoso drawing.

Review Quotes

An acerbic, outraged, frustrated and often hilarious response to then-President Richard Nixon.--Aruna D'Souza "The New York Times: Arts"

Never mind that Guston's later "cartoon" paintings are among my favorite period in the oeuvre of my favorite artist, the audacity, wit, and acerbic genius of these sketchbook renderings are richly satisfying on many levels.--Steven Heller "PRINT"

Poor Richard brings together the suite of outrageous, wacky, scatological, anti-Nixon drawings that Guston committed to two spiral-bound notebooks in the privacy of his studio in Woodstock in 1971, and which remained unpublished for 30 years.--Michael Glover "Hyperallergic"

Nixon critics tend to associate his name not just with lying and abuse of power, but also with maudlin sentimentalism and elaborate excuse-making. A half-century later, as we approach the end of the first term of a president who, for many people, has taken these same characteristics to a new and rarefied level, Guston's Nixon drawings look freshly relevant.--Sebastian Smee "Washington Post"

Philip Guston Now is the catalogue for a traveling exhibition that was supposed to open at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., this summer. Though that may yet happen, what we have for now is a lushly illustrated book with scholarly essays on various aspects of Guston's work by that exhibition's four curators. It is accompanied by Poor Richard, a slim volume containing a selection of Guston's satirical drawings of Richard Nixon, created in the summer of 1971, two years before Watergate [...] Together, the two books emphasize Guston's intense involvement in the world outside the studio.--Editors "Art In America"