Image Essay #5

David Salle's paintings of the 1980's were shocking in the best sense: not because of their images or subject matter, though some critics objected to the possibly demeaning depictions of women, but because they could look so bad and yet be so weirdly exciting and so promising of new possibilities for a medium that many people were not ready to take on. His juxtaposition, details, and illogical compositions gave his paints a mystery and charge that intrigued the art world then and now.

When David Salle emerged in art, his work was set squarely within the critical definition of post-modernism by its art-historical references and ambiguous combinations of original and appropriated imagery from artistic traditions such as Pop Art, Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, and Realism as well as images from popular culture. Salle’s pictures leave the viewer to develop meaning out of layered images and surrealistic disjunctions. His artwork includes erotically charged representations of nude women borrowed from pornographic magazines, quotations from Théodore Géricault’s paintings of corpses, and actual pieces of furniture affixed to the canvas. Mediums people have used before, but not in one piece of work. That is why I believe that this image is an above average image. Salle forced meaning into his artwork, that then forced meaning into people’s minds. No one really knew what Salle meant by any of his works, but left it to the audience.

Salle's imagery and the unique manner in which he drew from a variety of sources sets his painting apart from the work by other artists clamoring for public and critical attention. Salle often combined the figure with abstract forms and this juxtaposition typically resulted in a mode of painting that was at once accessible and unfamiliar. He differed from any artist in that his paintings were introspective, enigmatic, often brooding and vaguely disturbing meditations on the contemporary world and our desperate search for meaning. In a society fixated on images and image making, Salle presented us with an unsettling mirror of our own existence.