![Peter Saul](https://img.artlogic.net/w_504,h_378,c_lfill/exhibit-e/5b6b5f6d6aa72c4f430fcc53/d88f97ff62362bed2c1253e77effa34c.jpeg)
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Installation view of Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk, New York, Venus Over Manhattan, 2015
Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk
February 25 - April 25, 2015
Opening: Wednesday, February 25th, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Venus Over Manhattan
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075
(New York, NY) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present From Pop to Punk, paintings from the 1960s and 1970s by renowned painter Peter Saul, on view at 980 Madison beginning February 25, 2015.
Saul’s politically charged, and often politically incorrect, paintings are rooted in a system of removal from the artist’s beliefs, void of morals and ambivalent in their politics. Saul sources imagery from popular culture and current and historical events for his cartoonish and surreal depictions. The resulting paintings of the grotesque are more akin to social commentary than clear political statements.
Born in San Francisco in 1934, Saul settled in Paris in the late 1950s after completing his studies at California School of Fine Arts and Washington University, St. Louis. Saul is often associated with the Chicago Imagists, a group of artists typically defined by their Post-War tradition of fantasy-based art-making rooted in surrealism, pop culture, and the grotesque, as well as the Funk Artists of the San Francisco Bay Area. Like the Imagists and Funk Artists, Saul chose to work outside of the confines of the New York art scene, instead embracing humor in a time of stark seriousness.
Predating Pop Art, Saul’s Sex Boat (1961) is expressionist and loosely rendered, depicting banal everyday objects as a direct response to the existentialist beliefs of Abstract Expressionism. Saul’s paintings from the late 1960s and early 1970s, on the other hand, are more vibrantly colored, technically refined and illustrative. An exhibition highlight, Crucifixion of Angela Davis, 1973, depicts Davis as a green, contorted, monstrous figure strung about a wooden cross, stabbed with knives that read “JEEZ US,” “JEEZ IS,” and “JEE SIS”. A prominent counterculture leader of the 1960s associated with both human rights and violent activism, Davis remains a controversial political figure. These are the images that Saul is drawn to – “pictures with problems.”
ABOUT PETER SAUL
Peter Saul has exhibited his work internationally and throughout the United States. Saul’s work appears in numerous museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Peter Saul lives and works in New York.
For further information about the exhibition and availability, please contact the gallery at info@venusovermanhattan.com
Peter Saul
Sex Boat, 1961
oil on canvas
52 x 51 in
132.1 x 129.4 cm
Peter Saul
Custom Car, 1962
oil on canvas
42 x 59 1/2 in
106.7 x 151.1 cm
Peter Saul
Superman and Superdog in Jail, 1963
oil on canvas
75 x 63 in
190.5 x 160 cm
Peter Saul
Superman in the Electric Chair, 1963
oil on canvas
63 x 79 in
160 x 200.7 cm
Peter Saul
Sex Deviate Being Executed, 1964
oil on canvas
79 x 52 in
200.7 x 132.1 cm
Peter Saul
Homage to Thomas Hart Benton, 1966
acrylic and pen on canvas
49 x 71 in
124.5 x 180.3 cm
Peter Saul
Homage to Thomas Hart Benton, 1966
ballpoint pen, colored pencil, crayon, marker and pencil on board
41 x 61 in
104.1 x 154.9 cm
Peter Saul
Human Dignity, 1966
acrylic and pen on canvas
59 x 59 in
149.9 x 149.9 cm
Peter Saul
No Title, 1966
ballpoint pen, colored pencil, crayon, marker and pencil on board
41 x 54 in
104.1 x 137.2 cm
Peter Saul
No Title, 1966
ballpoint pen, colored pencil, crayon, marker and pencil on board
41 x 55 in
104.1 x 139.7 cm
Peter Saul
Personal Disease, 1966
acrylic and pen on canvas
49 x 65 in
124.5 x 165.1 cm
Peter Saul
Red Hitler, 1966
ballpoint pen, colored pencil, crayon, marker and pencil on board
41 x 54 in
104.1 x 137.2 cm
Peter Saul
G. I. Christ, 1967
oil on canvas
92 x 86 in
233.7 x 218.4 cm
Peter Saul
Target Practice, 1968
acrylic on canvas
92 1/2 x 99 1/2 in
235 x 252.7 cm
Peter Saul
All the Money in Palestine, 1969
acrylic on canvas
68 x 96 in
172.7 x 243.8 cm
Peter Saul
Frenching in ‘Frisco, 1969
acrylic paint, colored pencil, crayon, and marker on board
41 x 41 in
104.1 x 104.1 cm
Peter Saul
The Government of California, 1969
acrylic on canvas
68 x 96 in
172.7 x 243.8 cm
Peter Saul
Self-Defense, 1969
acrylic on canvas
68 x 96 in
172.7 x 143.8 cm
Peter Saul
Pinkville, 1970
acrylic on canvas
90 x 131 in
228.6 x 332.7 cm
Peter Saul
San Quentin #1 (Angela Davis at San Quentin), 1971
acrylic on canvas
71 x 94 in
180.3 x 238.8 cm
Peter Saul
Crucifixion of Angela Davis, 1973
acrylic on canvas
83 1/2 x 67 1/2 in
212.1 x 171.5 cm
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”).
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 in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
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.
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.