Peter Saul’s work is noisy by design. Filled with twisting figures, lurid colors, and disturbing themes his subject is political and social awareness. His work raises a ruckus – screaming into the void. The show starts with early works that reference some pop iconography – consumerism and popular culture being the main targets – but swiftly transitions to his bold series of paintings dealing with the Vietnam War. He uses a day-glo palette to depict soldiers committing atrocities against grotesquely stereotyped Vietnamese civilians. Bullets follow loop-de-loop trajectories, arms flail like octopus tentacles, and bodies are trampled. He’s a man who found his calling early.
Saul’s work is instantly identifiable – there’s no other artist who is so committed to visual mayhem. He mangles figures like a fun house mirror and paints them in carnival colors. His paintings are all elbows and assholes, distorting the picture plane into unnatural dimensions. Saul makes good use of a stippling technique that provides shading and develops form but also resembles the pox. There’s also no shortage of bodily fluids. He commits violence on his subjects – and while an obvious stylistic influence is satirical comics like Mad Magazine and Thomas Nast – also makes me think of Francis Bacon, who likewise had a penchant for nailing people to crosses.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the show is that the topics Saul depicts early in his career are still relevant today. Even the cast of characters has remained – there’s a painting of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh attacking Little Orphan Annie, another painting portrays NYPD violence on the subway. He has expanded his subjects with a few paintings of Trump – one as a swampy figure lounging with alligators and another using his hair piece as an abstracted design element. While some of these figures are no longer among us we still live with their legacies – Reagan as California’s governor was an earlier target. Saul has also taken on history painting and colonialism portraying the discovery of America as a Boschian nightmare of violence and recreating Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware with rubbery delight. His work is like a joy buzzer – an uneasy mix of humor and pain.
Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment
Third and Fourth Floors
February 11–May 31, 2020
Jordan Casteel’s paintings depict ordinary people: college students, neighborhood figures in Harlem, commuters on the subway. Earth tones dominate the palette and the subjects are portrayed with warmth and affection. You can’t help but feel an affinity for these people and their lives – this is the other side of the coin from Saul’s subjects. The paint is lush, following the contours of the bodies. Any distortions serve to fit the form to the composition, to place them securely into their environments. I can’t recall ever seeing an Arizona Iced Tea advertisement painted with such care. It’s the attention to details that make the work really resonate, like capturing the way a child buries itself into the heavy coat of their guardian. This is realist painting at it’s best, documenting life with honesty and care.
Jordan Casteel: Within Reach
Second Floor
February 19–May 24, 2020
New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212.219.1222
