{"id":84260,"date":"2015-03-31T20:53:18","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T00:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=84260"},"modified":"2015-04-01T10:19:43","modified_gmt":"2015-04-01T14:19:43","slug":"pictures-with-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/31\/pictures-with-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Pictures with Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"personaldisease\"<\/a>

Peter Saul, Personal Disease<\/i>, 1966, acrylic and pen on canvas, 49″ x 65″.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI think I was way oversensitive as a kid, very much easily frightened,\u201d Peter Saul said in an oral history for the Archives of American Art<\/a> in 2009:<\/p>\n

\n

I was frightened of movies, very scared. My mother was quite a fan of film noir and mystery stories by Ellery Queen and things of that type. And she took me to these movies, which by today\u2019s standards would be not only harmless, it would be impossible to imagine any child or human being being scared of. Dressed to Kill<\/i> [1941] was the first one I remember … The reason I was scared was because it took place in an old Victorian building like my parents rented at that time. And there was a dumbwaiter that went from the basement, where there had been some servant kitchen, up to the dining room. And in the movie, a hand comes out of the dumbwaiter with a gun and shoots somebody at the dining table.<\/p>\n

So anyway, we come into the dining room in the evening. The maid is going to serve the stuff and everything is fine. I realize that my position is with my back to the dumbwaiter. If it were to happen, of course, you know, imagination takes over, you know. I thought, oh, my God; I could be killed this evening.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You can see the aftereffects of this fear in his work, and it\u2019s contagious. To look at a Peter Saul painting is to think, I could be killed this evening\u2014but, you know, I\u2019m kind of looking forward to it. \u201cFrom Pop to Punk<\/a>,\u201d a show at Venus over Manhattan featuring his work from the sixties and seventies, brims with candy-colored violence and lush, vibrant grotesqueries. Hundreds of hands (and eyes and tongues) with guns emerge from the dumbwaiters of the mind. Things writhe, stab, choke, and unravel, often simultaneously. Saul, who\u2019s eighty now, describes these as \u201cpictures with problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSince I\u2019ve become old, I\u2019ve become much more interesting to most people,\u201d he said in his oral history. \u201cI haven\u2019t given up on painting. I think it has to have a good story, and I think that the story was banished from painting too quickly at the end of the nineteenth century.\u201d And Saul is definitely a storyteller\u2014the most interesting one at the campfire, an antic, willfully offensive bard. The narratives in his paintings hover just on the right side of inscrutability, and his fondness for labels (\u201ccombined rich and poor asshole\u201d is a personal favorite) helps to demystify, though not, of course, to solve: these are pictures with problems, not solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Pop to Punk\u201d shows through April 18. <\/p>\n

\"crucifixionangeladavis\"<\/a>

Peter Saul, Crucifixion of Angela Davis<\/i>, 1973, acrylic on canvas, 83 1\/2″ x 67 1\/2″.<\/p><\/div>

\"supermansuperdog\"<\/a>

Peter Saul, Superman and Superdog in Jail<\/i>, 1963, acrylic on canvas, 75″ x 63″.<\/p><\/div>

\"selfdefense\"<\/a>

Peter Saul, Self Defense<\/i>, 1969, acrylic on canvas, 68″ x 96″.<\/p><\/div>

\"petersaul1\"<\/a>

Peter Saul, Pinkville<\/i>, 1970, acrylic on canvas, 90″ x 131″.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

\u00a0Dan Piepenbring is the web editor of <\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think I was way oversensitive as a kid, very much easily frightened,\u201d Peter Saul said in an oral history for the Archives of American Art in 2009: I was frightened of movies, very scared. My mother was quite a fan of film noir and mystery stories by Ellery Queen and things of that type. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2384],"tags":[4154,15423,17632],"class_list":["post-84260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look","tag-paintings","tag-peter-saul","tag-venus-over-manhattan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPeter Saul\u2019s \u201cPictures with Problems\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"At eighty, the painter is still going strong, and a look at his work from the sixties and seventies reminds of the places he\u2019s been.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/31\/pictures-with-problems\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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