Photos By Gail

In the mid-1970s, after skewering American political, social and cultural; mores with his work, Peter Saul (b. 1934) took aim at the art world. Saul executed a number of parody responses to Willem de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle (1952-53, shown below). Here, Saul’s Woman With Bicycle (1976) spoofs de Kooning’s contorted female figure with distortions of his own, rendering the face as a grotesque cartoon and crowding the composition with lurid Day-Glo forms that both draw upon and satirize Surrealist and Pop styles. At once homage and attack, this painting challenges art history, even while claiming Saul’s place within it.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Peter Saul, de Kooning’s Woman With Bicycle →