Peter Saul
b. 1934; San Francisco, CA
Saigon, 1967
Acrylic, oil, enamel, and fiber-tipped pen on canvas
In Saigon, Peter Saul relies on ugly stereotypes of both Vietnamese women and American soldiers to grab the viewer's attention. Saul drew on the power of the sensational to critique the American military propaganda that promoted such stereotypes. Two years after painting Saigon, Saul wrote that given the "newspaper accounts of recent American atrocities in Vietnam, that picture has ceased being a far-out and imaginative accusation." Events such as the My Lai massacre in March of 1968, during which hundreds of civilians were murdered, and the subsequent Pentagon cover-up proved that reality was even more shocking than the nightmare Saul had conjured.
