David Salle - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 16, 2006 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Leo Castelli Gallery, New York; Mary Boone Gallery, New York; Gagosian Gallery, New York

  • Exhibited

    Donaueschingen, Fürstenberg Sammlungen, ahead of the 21st Century—The Pisces Collection, June 2002 – October 2004, no. 152, pp. 12 & 111 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    “I tend to see everything at once. And I’ve had to reconcile this with my desire to make autonomous, self-sufficient art. I remember driving down the street in Venice, California, when I was in school and feeling the facades of buildings, separating out from the buildings themselves. I saw that everything in this world is simultaneously itself and a representation of the idea of itself. In a way, that became the starting point.” (David Salle quoted in P. Schjeldahl, “Salle”, New York: Vintage, 1987, p.48).

    Embracing the device of pastiche and collage, which is central to modern art, David Salle made it both the form and content of his work. His canvases are populated with dramatic images lifted from sources as various as his own black-and-white photographs, eighteenth through twentieth century French and American painting, print advertising from the fifties, and “learn to draw” manuals. These juxtapositions have imbued his paintings with a mystery and charge, as well as categorized Salle in the context of both "postmodern" and "neo-expressionist" art. Using cinematic techniques of quick edits and surprises of super-imposition, Salle’s images float in a world of simultaneity and equilibrium. In the present lot, Midday, 1984, the combination of overlaying images, serve to thwart any one particular narrative or meaning; this being Salle’s primary intention. Salle's paintings capture impressions of the detached observer, where intellectualism and eroticism are gathered, interwoven and implied, but never inserted by the artist into a comfortable vision of a coherent universe. In this way he reflects the ongoing modern preoccupation with the problem of reconciling one's individuality with the constant input of images and ideas from the outside, media-dominated world.

45

Midday

1984
Oil and acrylic on canvas and wood in two parts.
Overall 114 x 150 1/8 in. (289.6 x 381.3 cm.)

Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000 

Contemporary Art Part I

16 Nov 2006, 7pm
New York