David Salle Biography and Artwork

born Norman, OK (USA) 1952

Born on September 28, 1952, in Norman, Oklahoma, David Salle grew up in Wichita, Kansas. At the age of eight or nine, he began taking life-drawing classes at the Wichita Art Association. During high school, he attended outside art classes three days a week. In 1970, he began his studies at the newly founded California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, where he worked with John Baldessari. Creating abstract paintings, installations, and video and conceptual pieces, Salle earned a B.F.A. in 1973 and an M.F.A. in 1975, both from CalArts.

After school, Salle moved to New York, where he supported himself by working for artists, including Vito Acconci; teaching art classes; and cooking in restaurants. He also did pasteup in the art department of a soft-core pornography magazine. When the publisher folded, Salle saved a group of stock photographs depicting nudes, sporting events, airplane crashes, and such, which he later used as source material for his paintings. An exhibition of Salle's works on large rolls of paper was shown at Artists Space in New York in 1976. Around this time, he began experimenting with relief prints on unprimed canvas. He also made charcoal drawings on canvas of nude women in erotic poses and of objects such as telephones and airplanes.

Salle has mentioned the influence of filmmakers Douglas Sirk, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Preston Sturges on his thinking beginning in the mid-1970s. Cinematic devices, from close-ups and zooms to panning, montage, and splicing, have indeed been recognized in his work. In the late 1970s, Salle traveled to Europe, where he made an effort to see as much work as possible by his German Neo-Expressionist contemporaries. Fellow painter Ross Bleckner introduced Salle to art dealer Mary Boone, who first exhibited his work in 1981. Salle soon gained prominence as a leader in the return to figurative painting of the 1980s. In 1983, he began working on very large canvases, some of which include art-historical references. His first solo museum exhibition was presented at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1983.

Salle's work for the stage began in 1981, when he was asked to design the set and costumes for Birth of the Poet, a play by Kathy Acker under the direction of Richard Foreman. He has designed sets and costumes for numerous works by Karole Armitage'an avant-garde choreographer and dancer with whom he lived for seven years, beginning with their 1985 collaboration on The Mollino Room, performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov and American Ballet Theatre.

Salle has continued to paint alongside his work for the stage, creating such series as the Tapestry Paintings (1989–91), Ballet Paintings (1992-93), and Early Product Paintings (1993). In the 1990s, he added sculpture to his oeuvre and began exhibiting his black-and-white photographs, many of which were made in preparation for canvases. He also directed the commercial film Search and Destroy (1995), which was produced by Martin Scorsese and features Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, and Christopher Walken.

The artist lives and works in Sagaponack, New York.

Select Timeline

Select Exhibitions

• 1981 - Mary Boone Gallery New York
• 1981 - Larry Gagosian Gallery Los Angeles
• 1981 - Lucio Amelio Gallery Naples
• 1982 - Mary Boone Gallery New York
• 1982 - Leo Castelli Gallery New York
• 1982 - Anthony d'Offay Gallery London
• 1983 - Mary Boone Gallery New York
• 1983 - Museum Boymans-van Beunigen Rotterdam
• 1983 - Castelli Graphics New York
• 1983 - David Salle, Francis Picabia, Galerie Schellmann & Kluser Munich
• 1983 - Larry Gagosian Gallery Los Angeles
• 1984 - Leo Castelli Gallery New York
• 1984 - Galerie Bruno Bischofberger Zurich
• 1984 - Mario Diacono Gallery Rome
• 1985 - Texas Gallery Houston
• 1985 - Galerie Daniel Templon Paris
• 1985 - Mary Boone Gallery New York
• 1985 - Donald Young Gallery Chicago
• 1985 - Galerie Bernard Kluser Munich
• 1985 - Galerie Michael Werner Cologne
• 1986 - Leo Castelli Gallery New York
• 1986 - Mario Diacono Gallery Boston
• 1986 - Museum am Ostwall Dortmund
• 1986 - Asrhus Kunstmuseum Aarhus, Denmark
• 1986 - The Whitney Museum of American Art New York
• 1986 - The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
• 1986 - Art Gallery of Ontario Toronto
• 1986 - Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
• 1986 - Galerie Bruno Bischofberger Zurich
• 1986 - The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston
• 1986 - Institute of Contemporary Art
• 1986 - University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia
• 1987 - Mary Boone Gallery New York
• 1987 - The Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh
• 1987 - Galerie Bruno Bischofberger Zurich
• 1987 - Spiral Hall, Wacoal Art Center Tokyo
• 1988 - Mary Boone/Michael Werner Gallery New York
• 1988 - The Menil Collection Houston
• 1988 - Fundacion Caja de Pensiones Madrid
• 1988 - Staatsgalerie Modern Kunst Munich
• 1988 - The Tel Aviv Museum of Art Tel Aviv
• 1988 - Galerie Bruno Bischofberger Zurich
• 1989 - Waddington Galleries London
• 1989 - Galerie Michael Werner Cologne
• 1990 - Fred Hoffman Gallery Santa Monica
• 1990 - Castelli Graphics New York
• 1991 - Gagosian Gallery New York
• 1991 - Galerie Bruno Bischofberger Zurich
• 1992 - Galerie Daniel Templon Paris
• 1992 - Galeria Soledad Lorenzo Madrid
• 1993 - Newport Harbor Art Museum California
• 1994 - Mary Boone Gallery New York
• 1994 - Gagosian Gallery New York
• 1995 - Galerie Bruno Bischofberger Zurich
• 1995 - Gagosian Gallery New York
• 1996 - Galeria Soledad Lorenzo Madrid
• 1996 - Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris
• 1997 - Gagosian Gallery Los Angeles
• 1997 - Galeria Claudia Gian Ferrari Milan
• 1998 - Baldwin Gallery Aspen
• 1998 - Itochu Gallery Tokyo
• 1999 - Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
• 1999 - Ludwig Vienna Castello di Rivoli
• 1999 - Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
• 1999 - Gagosian Gallery New York
• 1999 - Lehmann Maupin New York
• 2000 - Galleria In Arco; Torino, Italy.
• 2000 - Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, A.C., Monterrey, Mexico
• 2000 - Around 1984: A Look at Art in the Eighties, PS1, New York.
• 2001 - L'enigma ritrovato, Galleria in Arco, Torino, Italy.
• 2001 - Jablonka Galerie, Cologne, Germany
• 2001 - Gagosian Gallery, New York.
• 2001 - Mythic Proportions:Painting in the 1980's, Museum of Contemporary Art, North
• 2001 - Michael Lord Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• 2002 - Lehmann Maupin, New York.
• 2002 - Galleria Cardi, Milan, Italy.
• 2002 - Some Assembly Required: Collage Culture in Post-War America, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York.
• 2002 - Ahead of the 21st Century, The Pisces Collection, Furstenberg Sammnlungen
• 2003 - Reverie: Works from the Collection of Douglas S. Cramer, The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky.
• 2003 - Pictura Magistra Vitae, Fondazione Cassa Di Risparmio In Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
• 2003 - Spike Gallery, New York
• 2003 - Emilio Mazzoli Galleria D'Arte Contemporanea, Modena, Italy.
• 2003 - Waddington Galleries, London.
• 2003 - Mary Boone Gallery, New York.
• 2004 - Stella Art Gallery, Moscow.
• 2004 - Baldwin Gallery, Aspen.
• 2004 - I am the Walrus Cheim and Read Gallery, New York, Summer

Select Artwork

• Oysters, 2007
• Quartet, 2007
• Face in the Trees, 2007
• Lemon Pie, 2007
• Girl Reading, 2007
• Pearl Earrings, 2006
• Shelter, 2006
• Equalibrist, 2007
• Full Swing, 2007

Quotes

• "In retrospect the '70s were a winding down or a vaporizing of a strain of formalism that the New York School had fallen into. Everybody was waiting for Minimalism to die."
• "He was putting everything into his work then. The artist as porous membrane through which everything passes but to which some highly refined residue sticks.. the problem was to give that a concrete visual form. That is, of course, still the problem."
• "I start with an inability to see things singularly. The idea that you could muster the necessary belief in a mark or a shape to let that be the carrier of all the artistic meaning doesn't work for me. One thing automatically calls up another thing. And then that rhyme calls up a third thing to make a kind of chord. I have a musical analogy in mind."
• "I was for an art that wasn't so overdetermined, that had more of life's contradictions."
• "When you're young, you long to be accepted by a group, but by and large artists are not joiners."

Publications

• Zoetrope All Story Volume 2 Number 2 David Salle - by David Salle, Robert Bloch, Frederick Busch, Len Kruger, Peter Lefcourt, Claire Messud, Edna O'Brien, Tom Paine, Francis Coppola (1998)
• David Salle - by David Salle, Massimo Audiello, Charta (December 1997)

Quick Facts

• David Salle is an American painter and leading contemporary figurative artist.
• His paintings comprised what appeared to be randomly juxtaposed images, or images painted on top of each other with deliberately ham-fisted paint handling.
• His subject matter tended toward the popular, the gratuitous, and the pornographic, and was combined in ways that appeared deliberately incomprehensible. His work was called "cynical", "calculating", and "cold".

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