“Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment” is a disappointment in that it omits my favorite Saul painting.1 Let me amend that: “favorite” is a strong word. Art Critic Suicide (1996) has proven memorable because of the response elicited from its subjects: Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker’s longtime art critic; and Hilton Kramer, the one-time critic for The New York Times and co-founder of The New Criterion. In the painting, both men are rendered with cartoonish hyperbole and set awash in a garish purple-pink, each firing not one, but two guns into his respective temple. In his review of this New Museum show,...

 
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