ART-PRESENTATION: David Salle, Self-ironing Pants & Other Paintings

Like many artists of his generation, David Salle largely drew inspiration for his rich visual vocabulary from existing pictures. Based on models from art history, advertisements, design, and everyday culture, Salle creates an assemblage with manifold cultural references. In 2004, the Vortex element was added to Salle’s artistic syntax. It became the dominating element in his paintings.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Archive

Under the influence of artist John Baldessari, who was his mentor, David Salle developed an authentic approach based on the cinematic patterns of working with images, that later became infused with Pop and Conceptual art, as well as cartoons and graffiti. Through his painterly practice, Salle explored the status of the image, appropriation, and the mass media. Comprising large-scale paintings, David Salle’s exhibition “Self-ironing Pants and Other Paintings”  presents a radical visual approach, juxtaposing images sourced from advertising with black-and-white cartoons appropriated from The New Yorker magazine of the 1950s. These works create a pictorial space that is deliberately fragmentary, playing with suspended narratives and including allusions to Pop art, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. The title “Self-ironing Pants and Other Paintings” is typical of David Salle’s ironic stance on the status of painting, which he accentuates by using the witty slapstick mood encapsulated in the cartoons from The New Yorker. These works expressively challenge the notion of narrative, by presenting stereotypical fragments of the American lifestyle of the 1950s and 1960s. Commenting on this series, David Salle states: “This is not to historicize the present moment or the recent past; it’s a recognition that the “great destabilizing” has already occurred”. In 1970, David Salle 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 BFA in 1973 and an MFA 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 paste-up 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. 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. In his work since 2004, Salle has added the vortex motif as a compositional strategy in his painting, juxtaposing the cartoonish, abstract form with his characteristic representational imagery.

Info: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 7 Rue Debelleyme, Paris, Duration: 25/1-29/2/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, https://ropac.net