NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.— Peter Saul’s paintings stick out like a sore thumb. Or maybe they’re like a thumb to the eye. Saul has never been one to conform or adapt to any type of art world trend, and his precisely rendered acid-hued cartoon narratives evolved from earlier forays into Surrealism, which featured playful forms and looser abstract passages. Born in California in 1934 and now based in New York, he got his first big break while living in Paris after he sent a package of crayon drawings to the European Surrealist Matta in 1961, an act that led to his debut exhibition at Allan Frumkin Gallery in Chicago. Saul’s work was in sync with the Hairy Who group of artists prominent in Chicago in the late 1960s, whose work ran in opposition to the New York style of painting in vogue at the time, which was a more refined approach that coincided with minimalism. Instead of dwelling on conceptual concerns, Saul focused on figuration, often with biting political commentary. He combined high and low culture in a Vietnam-era melting pot, fusing MAD magazine–style graphics and psychedelia with a loose, painterly flourish. Saul's uncompromising visual punch can be seen in the work of contemporary painters Carroll Dunham, Manuel Ocampo, James Esber, and Tom Sanford, among many others.

The Orange County Museum of Art and guest curator Dan Cameron — director of Prospect.1 New Orleans — have organized the largest ever survey in the United States of Saul’s work, featuring paintings and drawings from 1960 to 2006, on view through September 21. Saul’s early paintings, such as Icebox Number 7 (1963), combine Expressionism and pop culture with a stream-of-consciousness approach. These works influenced the underground cartoonists of Zap Comix of the late 1960s and ’70s, whose creations Philip Guston used as a jumping-off point during his midcareer turn away from Abstract Expressionism. But Saul eventually abandoned this style in the early 1970s for more sharply defined forms and Day-Glo colors that, at least in reproduction, look like they could have been painted with an airbrush.

Many of Saul’s later pieces take on the mechanisms of the art world, such as Stop Kissing my Ass and Let’s Do Business (2001), which provides an apt depiction of the necessary evil of the marriage of art and commerce. He has also consistently confronted political themes, as in the left-leaning Columbus Discovers America (1992–95), which features both stereotypical images and outright gore. A more recent work, Bush at Abu Ghraib (2006), cudgels viewers with a strongly delivered message nearly as provocative as the horrors it addresses.

“Peter Saul” will travel to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia from October 18 through January 4, 2009.

Below, Saul comments on five shows on view in neighboring Los Angeles:

1. Ellen Berkenblit at Michael Benevento, through June 28

“These pictures take off from the innocent emptiness of early Warhol. Berkenblit's art speaks out confidently from this position and tells some interesting stories.”

2. Ralph Humphrey: Selected Paintings 1957 to 1980 at Daniel Weinberg Gallery, through June 28

“I think contemporary art as we know it was too tough and nasty for Ralph Humphrey, who lingered behind to find some kind of beautiful, romantic position he could be happy in. This work shows his rather slow journey.”

3. Nicola Pecoraro: Bad Couples at fette's gallery, through July 5

“Great big Art Brut faces with a dopey, almost happy expression, and more abstract ones that show ambition and achieve some good surprises. The individual pieces of plywood the works are pinned to are too much of a nod to serious modern art for this viewer, but it looks to be a good show.”

4. Doctrinal Nourishment: Art and Anarchism in the Time of James Ensor at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, through July 6

“This work embodies Germanic style agony meant to trouble the viewer, but it makes me laugh with joyous excitement. It's all very refreshing in light of the intellectual seriousness that surrounds us in galleries and museums today.”

5. Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, through September 22

“‘Measuring Your Own Grave’ is the best title for an art show in a long time. Graphically the pictures don't reach that level of interest, though 'Dead Marilyn' comes close, but all have a nice fluid touch.”