“This is one of my favorites of that year for composition - I like the way the shapes all seem suddenly flung together in a spontaneous arrangement - not at all formal or “stately” in appearance. I probably did not realize the swastika was inverted (backwards) because had not seen one since WWII comic books, 1940-44. I tried to think of as many hot or banned or unpleasant things as possible to put in my pictures to be against the idea of “cool”. I was very isolated, and happy to be isolated even though that’s probably a bad sign for my mental health. But even so, somebody must have shown me an art mag, most likely Art International and I thought this is a lot of crap, too much to think about and not enough to look at.

When it occurred to me to take this path, tell stories, make wrong kind of art deliberately, back in 1958, the very first subjects that occurred to me were Donald Duck, the electric chair, guns, bullets and knives, penis, and so on. I had not had enough personal experience to paint an “interesting” picture in my opinion, so I just made the whole thing up and still do. The swastika first occurred to me in 1960—the picture was called “Hitler’s bathroom” and may have been in my first NY show in 62, but I noticed Frumkin did not much like it, so probably used it only once or twice since. Anyway, the whole idea was to heat up my art, combat cool which I associate with pompous abstraction. The cigarette package is kind of simplified looking because I’d already painted them a lot and didn’t want to look repetitive.”

- Peter Saul, discussing “Untitled”, 1962 (above)

“This is one of the last paintings I made in Europe before returning to the United States in 1964, and I think I’m getting more conscious of how to paint the subject and skip the art style. And also, of course, I become aware by this time that my work is viewed humorously. So I’m into jokes. I noticed a lack of jokes in Modern Art – mostly it was very serious. So I felt I was contributing more by putting the jokes in then trying to have a serious attitude, which was already exemplified by a vast number of artists. There were a large number of artists, very serious, in 1964, thinking about art.

However, this is jokes about medical attention. It looks like specimens of the body have been placed under a bell jar on the left, priced at $29, and that 29 is written by a fountain pen, which is absorbing money. And of course the “Ouchwitz” word refers to the concentration camp, a forbidden subject. I never pay any attention to what is appropriate or not when I paint. So that’s neither here nor there. There’s a dog howling, who knows why, a hammer pounding, hatchets. There’s a duck with a red cross.

It’s partly about invention. Partly about flow of consciousness, letting your brain be free to make up anything it wants to, on any level, at any time, and not be bound by serious rules at any time. I was already aware from reading Art International magazine in 1964. That was the only one that was available and of course it was a very serious magazine. It had a lot of people explaining the importance something that I looked at, but it was not trying to be interesting. So I thought I’d try to be interesting, and make a painting that would hopefully be something to look at, at least.”

- Peter Saul, discussing “Mad Docter”, 1964 (above)

Life Story (Not a Life Story)

by Peter Saul

I’ve decided not to tell my life story over again: how I was born in San Francisco, went to art school in St. Louis, and so on. Not that it’s completely uninteresting. But I’ve already said it, to numerous interviewers.

Today I want to start at June 1950. That’s when I graduated from six years at a really, really crazy, old fashioned English style boarding school on Vancouver Island, western Canada. I’ve always described this place as a terrible experience, and it was, of course, with the beatings (which only occasionally drew a little blood), the racial prejudice (of the 80 boys, I was the only one accused of “having Jewish blood”, because of my biblical last name), and the general pain and misery.

But today, 68 years later, I want to see if I can think of something positive to say. Yes, it was very toughening. First of all, physically. All sports were compulsory, English football (I played hook and wing on the second fifteen), boxing, and cricket. This left me with a real hatred of “sports”. I’m absolutely not a team player. And I think that has had a big effect on my art, in that it never occurred to me to look for any group to belong to. If I ever knew the names of any professional sports teams, I’ve forgotten them, and I don’t care who wins at anything. Consequently, when I graduated from art school, it didn’t occur to me to go to New York, live in a loft, be one of the young artists getting to know Pollock, de Kooning etc. Instead, I wanted a romantic life – a beautiful room in a foreign country where I could paint my pictures. Something else needed? A beautiful woman and a lot of cigarettes to smoke would have been my simple answer.

Psychologically, the school was also very toughening. Waiting for an appointment to feel pain; waiting for a beating you know you’re going to get was grim, no fun. This gave me an appreciation of smoking, of why they always offer a condemned man a last cigarette. Taking a few puffs before and after the beating really helped a lot.

The antisemitism at the school was just one of these crazy things that suddenly starts, and equally suddenly stops. At age 10, I certainly didn’t know I was Jewish, my parents never attended a church: Sunday morning was for reading the comics and doing nothing. It’s probable I had never heard of the word “Jewish”. Now I was accused of this bad blood. I dared not ask my parents because how am I to know what kind of blood was in my veins? Maybe I really was Jewish. I protested! Kept on saying “I am not Jewish”. I think what happened after about 3 years is my mother gave me a beginner’s oil painting set and Saul the artist became more interesting to talk about than Saul the Jew. In a way it may have increased or deepened my capacity to have a sense of humor, to have lived a tiny mockery of the 20th Century’s worst event. Today, and possibly ever since then, if the picture I’m working on requires me to have a humorous attitude for freshness or vigor, I can do it. No kidding! I know it’s immature and probably wrong but I can laugh at anything. Which doesn’t mean I’m going to, just that I could if my picture asks me to.
Blame the picture!

This is going to be a chance to exhibit my work in art gallery and sell it to art collectors, if I were to be lucky. But I would need an “art style”, something obvious and visual to repeat from one picture to the next. What could that be? As the train rattled along, that’s what I was thinking about. We’d been forced to leave Holland because we had been there over a year but had neglected to get visas. We were renting a couple of rooms in Bergen aan Zee, a tiny town in the north so Vicki could paint the local scene, sand dunes and forests, when all of a sudden the local policeman asked to see our passports and told us politely that we would have to leave the next day.

In Paris I found studio space in the American Student and Artist’s Club, on Boulevard Raspail. The place had an atelier on the top floor where anyone with an American passport could paint. It only cost $12 a year and you had to wear a necktie to cross the lobby and walk up the stairs. Not crowded at all, never more than 5 or 6 artists there, including me. I decided to abandon my “principles” which were, basically, to be as singular as possible, and to “join up”, try to take part in the abstract-expressionist art movement I was acquainted with through reading Art News magazine back in Art School. The mere handful of people I knew up to this point all agreed that to be sold, a picture had to have the Abstract Expressionist “look”.

This was undoubtedly a very stupid decision I made. Unknown to me, the more sophisticated people in the art world were getting tired of ab-ex just at the very moment I was starting to do it. Why was I so isolated? So unknowing of what was going on? There is no good reason. Today, looking back I see I have always enjoyed a certain amount of isolation. Right now I have very little idea of what is going on in New York which is only two hours away. Fortunately, Abstract Expressionism turned out to be easy to do: just relax, splash the paint and it will give the picture a fresh look. 

In two weeks I was more or less an expert and was wondering what else should be on the canvas along with this “art style”, to give it some difference. To be successful with a viewer, to be actually looked at with interest, my picture would need to have some potential for being right or wrong, better or worse, in someone’s opinion, than some other picture.

So I found some photos of common commercial objects – ice cream cones, cars, cigarettes, etc. – and put them in the picture which turned out not to be so easy because Ab-ex looks great by itself but is pretty hopeless for making a convincing image of something on a canvas. After a couple more weeks of effort, I decided to simply accept the lack of unity, some parts of the picture would be totally loose and abstract, other parts “tighter”, representing “things”, cars, cigarettes and so on.

I now had a few pictures the few visitors to the atelier could look at with interest. Who were the visitors? I don’t know. There were occasional social functions in the building and small groups of people, probably French, who would wander in to the atelier to see what the artists were doing. I watched these occasional visitors very carefully, out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes they seemed very pleased with my pictures, laughed and pointed.

That was a good sign. Glad to be entertaining! On the other hand it was disquieting because if there’s one certainty about “modern” art, it’s that in order to please a select handful of supposedly important viewers, it has to displease a lot of the others, appear wrong or nonsensical if not worse. My problem was solved when I wandered into the Mistral bookstore.

I failed to realize the obvious fact that it’s impossible to become an interesting person except in the opinion of other people. After I turned seventy-five, some people began to
think of me as an interesting person, a lucky break!

Anyway, with financial pressure removed, thanks to Allan Frumkin in New York and Denise Breteau in Paris, I was totally free from about 1960 onwards. Vicki and I celebrated by moving to Rome, Italy in 1962. It seemed to us a more luxurious lifestyle would be available there, and more sunshine.

Now I’m skipping ahead to 1984. I’m 50 years old and while I was a famous artist in 1962, I’ve gradually become little known, a sort of respected “cult artist”. But this unfortunate professional decline has been barely noticeable because my life has become so pleasant. I’ve been re-married for over 10 years, to Sally, totally happy this time. And I’ve become an expert at painting very disturbing pictures in a glamorous way: subway massacre, various people in the electric chair, Oedipus Jr., Girl Trouble and so on – what I regard as my mature work.

So why paint this “gloom and doom” if I’m so happy? It’s a question I was often asked and often couldn’t think of an answer. Finally, my oldest son, who is not a fan of my art, said “you only paint these things because they’re not you”. That sounds like the right answer, and it fits in with my lifelong tendency to seek catastrophic or violent subjects, usually historical and often fictional. Sort of like knocking on wood for good luck, but also for laughs because you don’t believe in luck anyway.

Of course I’ve had a lot of sincere and intelligent criticism from professional critics, curators and thinkers for not being honest with myself, true to my beliefs, origins, etc. Well, yes, I am going to paint any picture that occurs to me as interesting to look a at. However, over the years I’ve gone from needing zero approval to a much more normal attitude, where a good review is worth a bottle of champagne.

Before going on, I want to go back, to 1965. After 8 years in Europe, I’d just returned to the U.S. and was living in a small town just north of San Francisco. The subjects I’d been painting – Donald Duck in the electric chair, Mickey Mouse versus the Japs, and so on, did not seem interesting to continue. I wanted something new. But what? Where? Just like years before when I picked up an example of Mad comic book in the Mistral bookstore, this time I looked in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, and there was everything my art needed. Page 1, Vietnam War. Page 2, drugs and crimes committed by lunatics. I just put the whole thing on one big canvas. In the long run it turned out a lucky break that I was able to contrast with all the other New York art shows which were totally involved in technical contrasts like the shape of canvas, the thickness of paint, and had zero humanistic content. But back then, 1968 or ’69, I couldn’t figure out why my pictures weren’t getting any appreciation.

Now I want to zoom ahead to 2000. After 19 years, I’ve just retired from my teaching job in Austin, Texas. It was a pleasure! Not only is teaching “modern” art very easy money – open your mouth twice a week and who knows what spontaneous wisdom may come out of it, but at the same time teaching trains your voice to actually sound more convincing. Year by year, you sound, at least to yourself, like more of an authority, more expert at whatever you talk about. So, Sally and I move to New York, to perhaps enjoy more normal art careers, something we weren’t able to do before, me because of my silly fears from early experiences described in this essay, Sally because of her modesty.

How’s it going after 18 years in or near the art capital? Fine. We’re right in the middle of things. I still want to be an outsider – to some extent. It embarrasses me slightly that I now hire someone to stretch and prime my canvasses. On the other hand it’s nice to have plenty of money. Sally has a lot more energy + interest in people than I do. Concerning “art”, it still makes me laugh that anyone ever believed in any idea of it. I actually have always considered all hand painted pictures about equal. If there’s a difference between them it’s that some are carried through more confidently than others. It’s just so called “intelligent + educated” opinion that separates the good from the bad. And I hope I’m still bad, at least most of the time, because it’s more unusual and fun to look at. From visiting art shows and art schools, I’d say, with typical exaggeration, there’s a 100 good pictures for every bad one.

If there’s a difference between painting a picture right now, in 2018, and 60 years ago 1958 when I first arrived in Paris, it’s that I’m not concerned with “art style” anymore. Instead I’m more concerned with the individuality of the picture. When it comes to actual painting, I let the subject matter guide me, as much as possible.