Peter Saul in his Germantown, N.Y., studio. Photo by Eric Chakeen
New York Times Style Magazine
Artist's Questionnaire: Peter Saul Doesn't Want Any Advice
The painter — known for colorful, cartoony works that explore the depths of American depravity — is still pushing the boundaries, but enjoys quiet afternoons on his porch most of all.
Saul landed on just what he wanted to do around 1959, when he was living in Paris and selling copies of The Herald Tribune on the street, which he refers to as his last real job. He found Abstract Expressionism, the dominant American mode, too cerebral. Instead, he shaded toward realism, but only just, creating soft, flat, crowded compositions of cartoon steaks spilling out of iceboxes and rubbery superheroes with snaking limbs. He was lumped in with the Pop artists but bristled at the association. “As soon as I realized it existed, I wanted out of it because I felt that I was being used as a bad example,” he said. “I was rebellious."
Peter Saul: New Paintings, Venus Over Manhattan, 2021
Venus Over Manhattan
Peter Saul: New Paintings
Venus Over Manhattan and Michael Werner Gallery are pleased to announce a joint exhibition of new paintings and works on paper made by acclaimed artist by Peter Saul over the course of 2020 and 2021
The exhibition elaborates Saul’s longstanding critiques of official artistic movements and features archetypal characters in vivid paintings that highlight source materials and symbols familiar from his oeuvre. Saul’s new works here foreground his continued relevance as purveyor of a wholly unique, madcap vision, and testify to the outsized influence of his groundbreaking art.
Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment, New Museum, 2020
Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
Marking the artist’s first New York museum survey, this exhibition will bring together approximately sixty paintings from across his long career.
Read more
The New York Times
Critics Pick: The Wild, Anti-Authoritarian Art of Peter Saul
The painter’s biting critiques shape his five-decade retrospective at the New Museum.
By Holland Cotter
Politically, 2020 has been, so far, a gonzo variety show of executive howlers and hissy fits; prayer breakfasts and Iowa pratfalls; split “victories” and revenge firings. The weirdness overload has almost seemed staged to distract from other American realities: migrant detention centers, corporate land grabs, climate catastrophe and the cruelties of poverty and racism. All of which makes the arrival at the New Museum of “Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment,” a critically acidic dirty bomb of a show, well-timed.
Read more
The New Yorker
The In-Your-Face Paintings of Peter Saul
His cartoony style and subjects exalt sensation as an end in itself.
By Peter Schjeldahl
Surprisingly, the timeliest as well as the rudest painting show of this winter, opening at the New Museum, happens to be the first New York museum survey ever of the American aesthetic rapscallion Peter Saul.
Peter Saul, "View of San Francisco," 1979. Acrylic on canvas; 67 1/2 x 131 in (170.7 x 332.7 cm).
Peter Saul, "Woman Artist Painting Three Pictures at Once," 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 in (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Peter Saul, "Trust Me," 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 50 in (152.4 x 127 cm)
Peter Saul, "Worst Student in the Class," 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in (152.5 x 122 cm)
Peter Saul, "New York Number 1," 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 96 in (182.9 x 243.8 cm)
Peter Saul, "New York Number 2," 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 96 in (182.9 x 243.8 cm)
Peter Saul, "Angry Horse," 2020. Acrylic, colored pencil on paper, 29 x 23 in (73.7 x 58.4 cm).
Peter Saul, "Bowl of Flowers with Insects," 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 84 inches (183 x 213.5 cm)
Peter Saul, "Sex Boat," 1961. Oil on canvas; 63 x 79 in (160 x 200.7 cm) PSAUL009
Peter Saul, "Superman in the Electric Chair," 1963. Oil on canvas; 63 x 79 in (160 x 200.7 cm) PSAUL009
Peter Saul, "Superman and Superdog in Jail," 1963. Oil on canvas; 75 x 63 in (190.5 x 160 cm) PSAUL008
Peter Saul, "Sex Deviate Being Executed," 1964. Oil on canvas; 79 x 52 in (200.7 x 132.1 cm) PSAUL022
Peter Saul, "G.I. Christ," 1967. Acrylic on canvas; 92 x 86 in (233.7 x 218.4 cm) PSAUL020
Peter Saul, "Target Practice," 1968. Acrylic on canvas; 92 1/2 x 99 1/2 in (235 x 252.7 cm) PSAUL017
Peter Saul, "Charm of Frisco," 1969. Mixed media on paper; 40 x 48 in (101.6 x 121.9 cm) PSAUL052
Peter Saul, "The Government of California," 1969. Acrylic on canvas; 68 x 96 in (172.7 x 243.8 cm) PSAUL025
Peter Saul in his Germantown, N.Y., studio. Photo by Eric Chakeen
Peter Saul was born in 1934 in San Francisco, California. He attended the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and the Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis. In 2020, the New Museum of Contemporary Art mounted "Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment," the first retrospective of Peter Saul's work in New York. In 2019, les Abattoirs, Toulouse presented "Peter Saul: Pop, Funk, Bad Painting, and More," a major retrospective of Saul's work, which traveled to Le Delta in Namur, Belgium. His work has been the subject of numerous international solo presentations, including recent exhibitions at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg; the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg; The Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York; and the Fondation Salomon Art Contemporain, Alex. In 2008, his work was the subject of a traveling retrospective curated by Dan Cameron, which opened at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, and traveled to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans. An earlier retrospective of his work opened at the Musée de l’Hôtel Bertrand, Dole, in 1999, and traveled to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mons. Saul’s work is frequently featured in major group exhibitions at institutions both stateside and abroad, including recent presentations at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; The Met Breuer, New York; the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln; Kunsthalle Emden; the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich; the New York Academy of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille; the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow; MoMA PS1, Long Island City; the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence; and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus. His work is held in the permanent collections of numerous public institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 1993, Saul received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. In 2008, Saul received the Artist’s Foundation Legacy Award. In 2010, Saul was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Peter Saul lives and works in New York City and Germantown, New York.
The rebellious painter and subversive sculptor share a renovated studio in their upstate New York compound, where each serves as the other’s champion.
Venus Over Manhattan gallery has prepared an exhibition of 40 of his early works on paper covering the period between 1957 and 1965, in which the celebrated artist developed his unique style.
Peter Saul special edition print included in Counter Edition collaboration with Greenpeace.
The American painter proves his creative spark is still strong in a new show at Michael Werner Gallery in London.
The Chronicle’s guide to notable arts and entertainment happenings in the Bay Area.
Adam Lindemann hosts talk "Beeple + Peter Saul: 15 Minutes or Forever? Art In the Age of the NFT"
Artist talk, Beeple + Peter Saul, is considered a microcosm of Art Basel Miami Beach and the current art market.
Beeple and Peter Saul discuss art and reputation with Adam Lindemann at the Bass Museum.
Talk, "Beeple + Peter Saul," is featured in Miami Herald's Guide to Miami Art Week 2021.
The painter — known for colorful, cartoony works that explore the depths of American depravity — is still pushing the boundaries, but enjoys quiet afternoons on his porch most of all.
The 86-year-old painter is showing his latest works in concurrent New York gallery shows at Venus Over Manhattan and Michael Werner Gallery.
Peter Saul: New Paintings
If a painting is the material expression of an idea and if the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, can we call Peter Saul our quintessential painter?
Before he turned 30, it was clear that Saul had found his subject: an American society deeply rooted in consumerism, pervasive racism, and toxic masculinity.
For Peter Saul, the road to his major retrospective at the New Museum was a bumpy one.
No artist has captured the horror and hilarity of American life quite like Peter Saul. There's Mona Lisa puking on her chin, O.J. Simpson in the electric chair, and Donald Trump getting punched in the face by a cheeseburger. Now, after 60 years making paintings, he's suddenly an art-market darling—and has just mounted his biggest retrospective yet.
In partnership with the New Museum.
The "patron saint" of Day-Glo colors is having quite a moment.
On view from now until May 31.
The 86-year-old artist, seen as one of the fathers of the Pop Art movement, discusses his career of political provocation
Peter Saul is unlikely to get an official, presidential portrait commission any time soon. Perhaps that’s a missed opportunity, as the 85-year-old Californian painter has included a wide array of US Presidents in his paintings
The painter’s biting critiques shape his five-decade retrospective at the New Museum.
His cartoony style and subjects exalt sensation as an end in itself.
A conversation with the painter ahead of his retrospective at the New Museum in New York.
It seems crazy to think that this is the first NYC museum survey for Peter Saul, who has influenced a generation of contemporary artists. For many, Peter Saul is a gateway drug.
Acid in both color and content, Peter Saul's cartoonish political commentaries are still outlandish and relevant 60 years on.
Peter Saul has been called a painter’s painter.
Peter Saul's pointed and provocative style of paintinging has been raising brows and hackles since the late 1950s.
In Sally Saul's Together (2017), two happy polar bears stand side by side, holding hands. They look content (if a little befuddled), ready to face whatever the future might bring.
Robert Arneson, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Jack Beal, Joan Brown, William N. Copley, Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, Red Grooms, Philip Guston, Robert Hudson, Maryan, Willard Midgette, Richard T. Notkin, Jim Nutt, Philip Pearlstein, Peter Saul, Richard Shaw, H.C. Westermann, William T. Wiley
In many ways 2015 was a year of historical return for New York’s galleries, with successful exhibitions of the Memphis group (“wacky, boldly kitsch-adjacent design”), Hollis Frampton (“penetrating, conceptually-oriented photography”), and septuagenarian Lynn Hershman Leeson (“started making alliances between art and science well before trendy millennial artists”).
The wonderful exhibition “Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk”—challenging, engrossing, troubling—which consisted of sixteen ambitious paintings and five equally ambitious drawings from the 1960s and ’70s, was woefully mistitled: There was nothing waywardly adolescent about this show, nothing punk, as I understand the meaning of both word and style.
I doubt Peter Saul will ever get his critical due as the significant painter of his generation that he is. Like Robert Colescott, another artist who did not hesitate to offend in his skewering of U.S. culture, Saul has never toed the line of art-world taste (or tastefulness), remaining staunchly figurative and political, and a painter to the core.
“The cowboy has been written about as if it were the pinnacle of freedom … In fact, it was a sleepless drudgery almost beyond imagination.”
Peter Saul is probably older—and cooler—than your favorite artist. Last Friday night at Neuehouse, he and contemporary art star Joe Bradley took part in a conversation moderated by Dallas Art Fair founder Chris Byrne.
Now, here’s an interesting pairing. Peter Saul, who has a mad funhouse of a show up at Venus Over Manhattan, will be talking to one of this decade’s most prominent market darlings, Joe Bradley.
Caught up in the fluorescent reds, acidic greens, and woozy ultramarine blues coating erotic entanglements of cartoons and classical figuration, politics and fantasy, in these acrylic and oil canvases, you could just miss the black marker insignia “SAUL ’68” on Target Practice.
In August 1970, civil rights activist Angela Davis became the third woman ever to be placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list.
“From Pop to Punk,” a show at Venus over Manhattan featuring his work from the sixties and seventies, brims with candy-colored violence and lush, vibrant grotesqueries.
Peter Saul’s anarchic imagination is a singular phenomenon in American art.
Even before there was Pop Art, Peter Saul was making it. Born in 1934, Saul gave birth to his idiosyncratic style while living in Paris and Rome
“Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk” is a stunning, museum-quality survey of Peter Saul’s early work, from 1961 to 1973.
Peter Saul: ‘From Pop to Punk’ (through April 18) This selection of paintings and drawings owned by Allan Frumkin (1927-2002), Mr. Saul’s longtime dealer (30 years), brings a new clarity to Mr. Saul’s early development.
The New York art dealer Ileana Sonnabend once avowed — somewhat self-servingly — that the best collectors are people in her line of work. Every so often the evidence mounts, as it does with “Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk” at Venus Over Manhattan.
“A lot of these I haven’t seen since I sent them off!” the painter Peter Saul announced as he walked briskly around an exhibition of his work from the 1960s and early ‘70s at the Upper East Side’s Venus Over Manhattan gallery.
The latter inclination was revealed when discussing Saul’s current show at Venus Over Manhattan, comprised of works made in the 1960s.
Peter Saul is a national treasure, a man who still, at the age of 80, is making exuberantly perverse paintings of the really important stuff — like pastries, having sex with each other.
"I'm a nutcase when I get in the studio!"
Peter Saul may be 80 years old, but inside he feels like a 14-year-old boy. Since the 1950s, Saul has offended, grossed out and entranced the art world with his neon infused, cartoon snarls, jam-packed with gore, psychosexual mumbo jumbo and all kinds of visual excess.
