- Born:
- September 28, 1952, Norman, Oklahoma, U.S. (age 74)
- Movement / Style:
- Minimalism
- Neo-Expressionism
David Salle
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Who is David Salle?
David Salle, born in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1952, is an American painter known for his contribution to the regeneration of big, gestural, expressionist painting following minimalism and conceptual art. Salle attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and later moved to New York City, where he developed his signature style of overlaying images.
Salle's paintings use a collage aesthetic, incorporating images from various contexts into complex ensembles. He mixes "high" and "low" imagery and differing styles, such as art masterpieces with cartoon figures. His work has stirred varied reactions, including from feminists who have critiqued the voyeuristic depiction of women in his art.
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What kind of art is David Salle known for creating?
David Salle is an American painter known for his postmodern pastiche paintings, which mix modes of representation and appropriated ready-made motifs in a single canvas. Salle's signature style involves overlaying images, creating complex ensembles that recontextualize images from their original context. His works often include both "high" and "low" imagery, such as famous art masterpieces with cartoon figures, and mix differing styles, like contour line drawings and found objects. His art incorporates images from art history, popular culture, pornography, and anthropology, layering them like posters on city billboards.
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How does David Salle use images from different sources in his artwork?
David Salle is known for his postmodern pastiche paintings, where he mixes different modes of representation and appropriated ready-made motifs in a single canvas. Salle employs a collage aesthetic, taking images from their original contexts and recontextualizing them into complex ensembles.
He combines both “high” and “low” imagery, such as famous art masterpieces with cartoon figures, high-end designed objects with pornographic imagery, and ornamental motifs with reproductions of newspaper photos. Salle also mixes differing styles, including contour line drawings, modeled motifs, found objects, grisaille, crudely rendered images, and highly polished forms. His work gathers random images from all areas of history and culture and throws them onto his canvases.
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Why is David Salle considered part of the postmodern art movement?
David Salle is considered part of the postmodern art movement because his work embodies key aspects of postmodern aesthetics. Salle employs the postmodern technique of pastiche, where disparate images and styles are closely displayed, reducing everything to equivalent signs. His paintings reflect a collage aesthetic, recontextualizing images from various sources, including art history, popular culture, and pornography.
Salle mixes "high" and "low" imagery and differing styles in a single canvas, denying any hierarchy of subject matter. This approach aligns with postmodernism's concern with the coded nature of representation and the appropriation and rearrangement of existing imagery. His works function as metaphors for the overwhelming nature of media culture, a central theme in postmodern thought.
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What are some of David Salle’s most famous paintings or exhibitions?
David Salle is an American painter known for his postmodern technique of pastiche, where he mixes modes of representation and appropriated ready-made motifs in a single canvas. Salle's well-known paintings include Brother Animal (1983) and Muscular Paper (1985). One of his lesser-known works, Mingus in Mexico (1990), exemplifies his scattershot aesthetic, with figures extracted from Roman myths interwoven with an empty cartoon speech bubble, racist memorabilia, and a carefully constructed copy of a girl drinking from a cup.
Salle also designed costumes and sets for Kathy Acker’s play Birth of the Poet (1985) and pieces by Karole Armitage, such as The Mollino Room (1985), Time is the echo of an axe within a wood (2004), and Connoisseurs of Chaos (2008). He frequently exhibits his current work, including portrait diptychs such as Swamp Music (2013) and cartoon paintings such as Self-Ironing Pants (2019).
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How has David Salle influenced modern artists and the art world?
David Salle, an American painter born in 1952, is known for his postmodern pastiche style, which involves mixing various modes of representation and ready-made motifs in a single canvas. Salle's technique employs a collage aesthetic, recontextualizing images from both high and low culture. His paintings reflect the overwhelming nature of media culture through the close display of disparate images and styles. Salle's scattershot aesthetic is exemplified in Mingus in Mexico, where figures extracted from Roman myths are interwoven with an empty cartoon speech bubble, racist memorabilia, ghosts of chairs, and a carefully constructed copy of a girl drinking from a cup. Along with contemporaries like Julian Schnabel and Robert Longo, Salle helped regenerate big, gestural, expressionist painting after years of pared-down minimalism and conceptual art.
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David Salle (born September 28, 1952, Norman, Oklahoma, U.S.) is an American painter who, together with such contemporaries as Julian Schnabel and Robert Longo, regenerated big, gestural, expressionist painting after years of pared-down minimalism and conceptual art. Salle is known for mixing modes of representation and appropriated ready-made motifs in a single canvas, suggesting but defying any legible narrative. Employing the postmodern technique of pastiche, where the close display of disparate images and styles tends to reduce everything to equivalent signs, Salle’s paintings function as metaphors for the dizzying onslaught of media culture.
Salle grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and from 1973 to 1975 attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where he studied with John Baldessari. In 1976 he moved to New York City, where he found work in a publishing house that specialized in romance and pornography magazines and began to collect images from its archive. His earliest work involved the strategy of overlaying images, and this quickly became his signature style.
Salle’s paintings reflect what is essentially a collage aesthetic, whereby he takes images out of their original context and recontextualizes them into complex ensembles. Like Robert Rauschenberg before him, Salle denied any hierarchy of subject matter by including both “high” and “low” imagery in a single canvas: famous art masterpieces with cartoon figures, high-end designed objects with pornographic imagery, and ornamental motifs with reproductions of newspaper photos, for example. In addition to mixing high and low imagery, Salle also mixed differing styles, including contour line drawings, modeled motifs, found objects, grisaille, crudely rendered images, and highly polished forms. Notable examples included Brother Animal (1983) and Muscular Paper (1985). Although he denied any iconographic intent in his pictures, his consistent use of aggressively posed nude women elicited much response from feminists and others who objected to the voyeuristic nature of his art.
Salle’s other work included costume and set design for Kathy Acker’s play Birth of the Poet in 1985 and for a number of pieces by Karole Armitage—with whom he had a relationship for seven years—including The Mollino Room (1985), Time is the echo of an axe within a wood (2004), and Connoisseurs of Chaos (2008). He also directed the feature film Search and Destroy (1995). He frequently exhibited his current work, including such portrait diptychs as Swamp Music (2013) and such cartoon paintings as Self-Ironing Pants (2019). He also published a collection of essays, How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art (2016).