A fake smile, a clean suit, hair neatly parted. Peter Saul’s portraits of the US presidents, from Reagan to Trump, are biting and bitterly angry.

A forced, self-satisfied smile plays on the pursed lips and the crinkled eyebrows. His hair sits on his head like a huge blob of yellow mustard. Donald Trump is hammering a nail into his head, and on the other side there is a thought bubble as if in a comic, showing the word “THINK”.

“Trump Thinks” (2017) is one of Peter Saul’s sketches for a portrait of the serving President of the USA. “When I think of him [Trump], the vibe I get is sex, blatant sex with violence, and anger, and insecurity. That’s what he says to me.” And this is precisely what makes him interesting to the artist who, since the 1950s, has dedicated himself to the bizarre, who chooses exaggeration, shock and transgression as a strategy – albeit always coupled with wit – in order to direct attention towards the ugly and vulgar, which is otherwise all too easily suppressed. After all, “Shocking means talking,” as Saul puts it.

Art as a weapon

When Peter Saul began to paint socially critical images about the Vietnam War, police violence or corrupt politicians, he did so not with the intention of communicating his own political standpoint through these images. Even though, most significantly in his series of images on Vietnam, he parades the violent and obscene elements of war and uses art “as a weapon targeting the American armed forces”, it would be absurd to see the images themselves as a protest, the artist stresses in an interview. Rather, Saul makes use of current social events and phenomena; his works have always been influenced by the predominant social and political climate. “I’m just using what the culture gives me.”

Peter Saul, Trump Thinks, 2017, Courtesy the artist

In 1969, he created “The Government of California”. At that point Ronald Reagan was Governor of California and huge race riots were raging in the USA following the murders of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. In Saul’s oil paintings, Martin Luther King and Reagan curl like angel and devil around the Golden Gate Bridge, which is decorated with colorful rolls of toilet paper. Police violence, racism, drug trafficking, education, justice and social segregation are incorporated into the image by Saul not only symbolically, but literally. “The Government of California” is an example of Peter Saul’s technical precision and his narrative comic style, and also shows his skill in bringing certain elements that are visually compelling together with others of sickening content.

With a wad of dollar bills

After he was elected President of the USA in 1981, Reagan became an even more frequent target. In “Ronald Reagan in Grenada” (1984) Peter Saul portrayed him as an oversized anti-Superman dropping in on the small island state with a wad of dollar bills in hand. From the sleeves of his suit, five hands holding weapons emerge, which fire shots that rain down like chewing gum on the people. Blood spurts and Coca-Cola cans fly everywhere. When asked why he used Reagan as a subject so extensively, Saul responds: “He was there. He was the president. Before that, he was Governor of California. He simply seemed to be an authoritative figure that if used, especially sexually, could be a problem for people.” The ex-Hollywood actor and controversial politician was another “product” fabricated by American culture that Saul could use in his works.

Peter Saul, Government of California , 1969, Oil on canvas, 172,7 × 243,8 cm, Collection KAWS
Peter Saul, Ronald Reagan in Grenada, 1984, 210 x 180 cm / 82,7 x 70,9 inches, Acrylic on canvas, Hall Collection, © Peter Saul, Courtesy Hall Art Foundation, Photo: Jeffrey Nintzel

In the years 2004 and 2006 it was revealed that the USA had used torture during its occupation of Iraq. Photos and video material from the Abu Ghraib prison documented the violent abuse and sometimes fatal torture of Iraqi prisoners. In “Bush at Abu Ghraib” (2006), the artist portrayed George W. Bush with an Iraqi prisoner. The President, dressed in a suit and tie, poses in front of a brick wall. His eyes are turned towards the prisoner around which his arm is placed. The prisoner has already been hanged, his face is covered by gaping bullet holes, deformed and grotesque. One of the President’s fleshy fingers pokes into the corner of the dead figure’s mouth in a way that is reminiscent of Caravaggio’s “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas”, where Thomas pokes his index finger into Jesus’s open flesh, without the blood clotting.

So what?

Politics is merely another interesting object, like landscape, abstraction or anything else, according to Peter Saul. The artist believes that for far too long politics was excluded from the official history of modern painting, with the reason being the fear that a political idea would make only a temporary impact and would not stand the test of time. “If so, so what? Or as Dalí might have said, ‘Blah, blah,’” quips Saul. Today political themes are readily picked up on by artists; often it would seem as if there is almost an obligation for art to be political. And the fact that someone like Donald Trump is not acceptable is in any case the consensus. Under these circumstances Peter Saul was initially reluctant to create a portrait of the current president. However, he then started work on the first sketches, which certainly sound promising: “He probably has three heads. He gets punched by money, scalped by Native Americans. He gets sawed by a tree that has come alive. I want a lot of things to happen to him, so he’s gotta have three heads.”

Peter Saul, Bush at Abu Ghraib, 2006, Acrylic on canvas, 198 x 228,5 cm / 78 x 90 inches, Hall Collection, © Peter Saul, Courtesy Hall Art Foundation, Photo: Jeffrey Nintzel