The paintings of Leon Golub are bleeding all over the Albright Knox. They loom eight and ten feet from floor to ceiling on endless curtains of linen, paint oozing off in rivers and clumps. The images are huge; you can't get away from Golub's monumental figures of war, torture, confusion and death. It's disgusting. And it is art.

After all, who says art has to be pretty? Elmwood's own Albright Knox Art Gallery currently provides convincing evidence that decidedly unpretty art can be valuable indeed. Golub's paintings, collected there in a career retrospective spanning the past fifty years, are as irrefutably political and artistically important as they are gruesomely jarring. There is very little in his body of work that can be considered beautiful, graceful or pleasing in the conventional meanings of the words. His Napalm paintings, populated by figures that appear to be made of raw hamburger meat, collapse and writhe; his Vietnam work is disturbingly graphic in its portrayal of combat violence and torture tactics. Part freakish caricaturist, part crude folk iconographer, Golub unabashedly aims for the most sensitive of our cultural sensibilities. His position as a social observer and interpreter is particularly interesting as it develops through his work post-Vietnam to the late nineties. Whereas the younger Golub straightforwardly depicted the evils societies inflict upon each other, his later work reflects the troubled mind of an artistic revolutionary unsure which war to fight anymore.

Leon Golub's work is disturbingly relevant, historically, artistically and politically. If you've never been to the Albright Knox, the Golub exhibition is the perfect excuse - not that you really need one - to get out there and look at some art. Admission is three dollars for students and seniors, four dollars for adults, and if you can peel yourself out of bed before one on Saturdays, you can wander the Albright's hallowed halls free of charge. Golub's paintings will be on display from now until April 15. Do something revolutionary this weekend. Allow Leon Golub's painfully poignant works to provoke and challenge you in ways pretty art could never dream of doing.