Tuesday 7 June 2011

David Salle - Part 2

This is the second part of a two-part post on the works of American painter David Salle. For biographical notes and more images, see Part 1.

1997-98 Bigger Rack

1998 Angels in the Rain

1998 Mr. Lucky

2001-02 Sweetness

2004 Fortitude

2004 Snow White

2005 Blue Flowers

2005 Untitled (Torso with Rose)

2005-06 After Michaelangelo, The Creation

2007 Distance From

2007 Equilibrist #2

2007 Face in the Trees

2007 Frank Comes out of the Doorway

2007 Full Swing

2007 Girl Reading

2009 Poets in their Youth

2010 I've Got it All up Here

2010 The Mennonite Button Problem

2010 Untitled

Sunday 5 June 2011

David Salle - part 1

This part 1 of a two-part post on the works of American painter David Salle. David Salle is one of the most significant American artists to have emerged in the early 1980s. His unique style of painting was influential in the international revival of large-scale, figurative painting that characterized much of the artistic production of this decade.

Salle was born in 1952 in Norman, Oklahoma. In 1970 he went to the 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.
Salle moved to New York, where he supported himself by cooking in restaurants, working for artists and teaching art classes. 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, aeroplane crashes and the like, 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. Cinematic devices – from close-ups and zooms to panning, montage, and splicing – have indeed been recognised in his work. In the late 1970s he travelled 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.

He 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.

Solo shows of Salle's art have been organized by the Museum am Ostwall Dortmund (1986–87), Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (1986–88), and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1999), among others. He has participated in major international expositions including Documenta (1982), Venice Biennale (1982 and 1993), Whitney Biennial (1983, 1985, and 1991), Paris Biennale (1985), and Carnegie International (1985).

1980 Untitled

1980 We'll Shake the Bag

1983 Tennyson

1983 B.A.M.F.V.

1983 King Kong

1984 The Miller's Tale


1985 Muscular Paper

1985 Reliance

1986 Colony

1988 Maid in Germany

1989-90 Canfield Hatfield 7

1989-90 Canfield Hatfield 9

1989-90 Canfiled Hatfield 5

1990 Mingus in Mexico

1990-91 Dean Martin in 'Some Came Running'

1993 Big Umbrella

1993 Picture Builder

1995 Old Bottles

1995 Shooting

1996 Homage to Richard

* See part 2 for more works by David Salle

Wednesday 1 June 2011

Philip Guston - part 2


This is the second part of a two-part post looking at the work and career of painter Philip Guston. For biographical notes and work produced during his abstract expressionist period, see part 1 below.
Around 1967 when Guston moved to Woodstock, New York his work underwent a shocking and radical change. Departing from the earlier lyrical and colourful abstract pieces he moved towards a more figurative approach. He somewhat shocked the art establishment by making reference to comic book style, something he had always been a fan of, particularly the Krazy Kat work of cartoonist George Herriman.

George Herriman's 'Krazy Kat'

Philip Guston's 'Edge of Town' 1969
He began working in this style at the time of the emergence of the new adult ‘underground’ comics, the leading exponent of which was Robert Crumb, whose work clearly had some influence on Guston. It is thought that Guston’s 1977 piece ‘Cabal’ paid direct homage to Crumb’s work.

Robert Crumb "Keep on Truckin'..."

Philip Guston's "Room" 1976 
oil on canvas
The first exhibition of these new figurative paintings was held in 1970 at the Marlborough Gallery in New York. It received scathing reviews from most of the art establishment – New York Times critic Hilton Kramer wrote "A Mandarin pretending to be a Stumblebum.”
His contract with the Marlborough gallery was not renewed and after a short period without any dealer he joined the recently opened David McKee Gallery where he showed until the end of his life. When criticized widely about the impurity of these later paintings, he responded, "There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from abstract art. That painting is autonomous, pure and for itself, therefore we habitually analyze its ingredients and define its limits. But painting is 'impure'. It is the adjustment of 'impurities' which forces its continuity. We are image-makers and image-ridden. There are no wiggly or straight lines..." In this body of work he created a lexicon of images such as Klansmen, lightbulbs, shoes, cigarettes, and clocks.
In late 2009, the McKee Gallery mounted a show revealing that lexicon in 49 small oils on panel painted between 1969 and 1972 that had never been publicly displayed as a whole. Guston is best known for these late existential and lugubrious paintings, which at the time of his death had reached a wide audience, and found great popular acceptance. Guston died in 1980 in Woodstock, New York.

1969 City Limits 
oil on canvas

1969 Outskirts 
oil on canvas

1969 The Studio 
oil on canvas

1970 A Day's Work 
oil on canvas

1970 Courtroom 
oil on canvas

1970 Daydreams 
oil on canvas

1973 Painting, Smoking, Eating 
oil on canvas

1975 Deluge II 
oil on canvas

1975 Midnight Pass Road 
oil on canvas

1976 Ancient Wall 
oil on canvas

1976 Green Rug 
oil on canvas

1976 The Pit 
oil on canvas

1977 Back View 
oil on canvas

1977 Cabal 
oil on canvas

1977 Curtain 
oil on canvas

1977 Sleeping 
oil on canvas

1978 As it Goes 
oil on canvas

1979 Entrance 
oil on canvas

1979 Talking 
oil on canvas