Criminal Being Executed

Peter Saul painted Criminal Being Executed during his post-college years in Europe, but as with all of the work from this important early period, it comments directly and critically on the affluent American society he had left behind. Saul’s work evokes the claustrophobia of a consumerist society and the lurid sensationalism of media-driven topical debate. Like the contemporaneous New York–based Pop artists, Saul drew his themes from current events, the daily news, and especially American comic strips, which chronicled escalating melodramas and explored issues of class and difference in subversive ways. But unlike the ironic and iconic imagery of the Pop artists, Saul’s hard-core humor and perversely provocative imagery can be read as a personal and political statement, intended to express his disdain for—and incite a response to—a way of life that he viewed as controlled by large, ambivalent forces. In works like Criminal Being Executed, the young artist struck back at the realm of advertising with its own weapons of exaggeration—distorted scale, quick contrasts, emphatic colors, and labels and logos. His depiction of violence, both past and anticipated, calls for an end to complacency and ironic detachment.