Piece Comment

Review of The Poet and the Painter


This piece is a gem. It is compact and intellectual, but at the same time has a highly whimsical quality. It recounts the story of how Bill Corbett wrote a poem based on a drawing by Phillip Guston and how this artist in turn was inspired to create drawings based on the very book in which that poem was collected. What is wonderful about this piece is how it is able to really capture the way that artists are inspired by one another. It deconstructs this process by pointing out which images of Corbett’s poem struck Guston and shows how he reinvented them. This piece in all its complexity still manages to capture the simple and pure way in which artists appreciate one another. Instead of having a heavy, overly academic feel, it conveys the innocence felt by two schoolyard nerds who compare their notebooks and suddenly become best friends. This is something that high-budget bio-pics often fail at.