“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, Schjeldahl mentioned his surprise at coming upon the painting some years back—in particular, having been paired with “an intellectual antagonist of mine.” This irony won’t be lost on anyone conversant with contemporary art criticism. It certainly wasn’t lost on Hilton. “Exactly why we should be linked for the honor of serving as Mr. Saul’s principal villains is a matter I can only guess at,” he wrote in The New York Observer in the year 2000. The artist is seen at the bottom of the canvas, a pimply faced homunculus gleeful at the turn of events. “Is it possible,” Hilton wondered, “that Mr. Saul objects to readable prose?”

Having followed Saul’s work over the years, I can report that objection is, in fact, his modus operandi. Objection to what, you might ask? Pretty much everything, and never are the objections stated mildly or shaded