Untitled (Drawing from the Phlebitis Series)

"Guston revived his childhood cartooning skills in drawings that capture Nixon and his cronies (sometimes hooded) in a series of savagely obscene caricatures. The thickness and weight Guston craved seemed to find gratification in turning Nixon's phlebitis into the visible bodily and metaphorical site of his nefariousness. In "The Phlebitis Series" the painter portrayed with hilarious and hideous exaggeration the tuberous swelling of the president's lower right leg and foot lanced with bandages, an exposed humiliating appendage he is condemned, Ahab-like, to drag long" (R. Posnock, Philip Roth's Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity, pp. 244-245).