Philip Guston’s Untitled: charting the decline of Tricky Dicky

Part of Philip Guston’s Untitled (full image below). Photograph: Genevieve Hanson/Courtesy of the estate and Hauser & Wirth

New look

Faced with the 60s and 70s’ political turmoil in the US, Philip Guston ditched abstract expressionism for a cartoonish style that mined the darkness of his day. Going to the studio to “adjust a red to a blue”, as he put it, no longer cut it.

Words and pictures

An early subject to stretch his new sense of purpose was Richard Nixon. The president was a pet hate of the artist and his close friend Philip Roth. While the novelist created the surreal satire Our Gang, Guston picked up a pencil, creating hundreds of images following Nixon from childhood to spectacular decline.

Tricky Dicky

In Guston’s drawings, as the president’s corruption grows, he becomes imprisoned in a lewd mask: his sagging cheeks, five o’clock stubble and long nose are transformed into a cock and balls.

So lame

This 1975 drawing was created shortly after Nixon had been granted a full pardon for the Watergate scandal and contracted phlebitis while under subpoena in the trial of his former aides. Guston’s depiction of his obscenely swollen leg suggests the guilt he is dragging with him.

Part of Philip Guston: Laughter in the Dark, Drawings from 1971 & 1975, Hauser & Wirth, W1, to 29 July

The last leg ... Guston’s president, with metaphorical phallic head and swollen leg. Photograph: Genevieve Hanson/Courtesy the estate and Hauser & Wirth