Sarah Douglas reviews Philip Guston and The Poets at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, on view through September 3, 2017.

Douglas writes that “the show, curated by Guston scholar Kosme de Baranano, is built–somewhat loosely–around Guston’s reading of and relationships with poets. There are the whimsical works on paper he made to illustrate his wife Musa McKim’s poems in 1972–75, and there are the other ones he made to accompany poems by his friend Clark Coolidge… And then there are the paintings, many of which are on loan from major institutions. De Baranano convincingly argues that Guston was drawing on imagery from poets like W.B. Yeats, Eugenio Montale, and Wallace Stevens, and also echoing those poets’ sensibilities.”