Quotes by David Salle

David Salle

Art is something someone made. It’s a product of human endeavor. As such, it’s not that different from having a conversation with someone. The painter is telling us something. Just, how do they – what’s their syntax? What’s their inflection?

Art

Different

Painter

Artists talk about art in sort of straightforward terms, more like the way you talk about plumbing fixtures. Does it function well? Does it bring the hot water up from the cellar efficiently, or does it lose too much thermodynamic energy in the process? Artists are also very ruthless with each other and can be very brutal in evaluating each other’s work because their criteria is almost more mechanistic. Does it do what it’s supposed to be doing in an efficient way? That doesn’t mean that intention is not part of the conversation, but it’s not the foreground.

Art

Mean

Water

As a young person, you have no fixed address, no studio, no money for materials, so I made things sort of on the run. That life doesn’t favor the stability and spatial demands of painting.

Addresses

Demand

Running

Being in love is dangerous because you talk yourself into thinking you’ve never had it so good.

Being In Love

Love Is

Thinking

Ever since I started painting, I have tried to get the fluidity and surprise of image connection, the simultaneity of film montage, into painting.

Connections

Fluidity

Painting

Fairfield Porter who has been my model for art writing all along, said that if the most interesting thing about a work of art is its content, it’s probably a failure. I think it’s true that if you find yourself thinking about the meaning in an author’s message, it’s probably not very interesting as art. Obviously, this is a tough concept, because if you withdraw intention.

Art

Thinking

Writing

For me, art history is like a feather bed – you fall into it and it catches you.

Art

Bed

Fall

I did all the stuff that people do – film, performance, photography, pictures and words, words and pictures. In retrospect, I was trying to find some way to put things – meaning images and forms – together that highlighted some idea of what was underneath the surface of an image, what determined how something was seen.

Ideas

People

Photography

I didn’t know anything about conceptual art when I left Kansas. I went to Cal Arts to be a painter, but the exciting stuff was happening elsewhere, so I took a holiday from painting for a few years.

Art

Holiday

Years

I do work hard at trying to find the right expression for something, which might be like finding the right image – choosing not only the right words but down to the right number of lines. I remember being in Maine once at Colby College with Alex Katz. It houses hundreds of his works. There was a painting of just one seagull against a blue sky. I was admiring it and Alex said, “45 brush strokes exactly.”

College

Hard Work

House

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Actors

Addresses

Art

Artist

Attitude

Bed

Being In Love

Beverly Hills

Butterfly

College

Color

Comedian

Connections

Creativity

Demand

Differences

Different

Done

Drawing

End Of The World

Enough

Extraordinary

Eye

Eyebrows

Fall

Fancy

Father

Feelings

Feels

Fluidity

Focus

Gang

Giving

Grateful

Hair

Hard Work

Holiday

House

Ideas

Imagery

Imagination

Information

Intelligent

Interesting

Italian

Kids

Kind

Littles

Live Life

Looks

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Quotes by David Salle

David Salle

Art is something someone made. It’s a product of human endeavor. As such, it’s not that different from having a conversation with someone. The painter is telling us something. Just, how do they – what’s their syntax? What’s their inflection?

As a young person, you have no fixed address, no studio, no money for materials, so I made things sort of on the run. That life doesn’t favor the stability and spatial demands of painting.

Being in love is dangerous because you talk yourself into thinking you’ve never had it so good.

Ever since I started painting, I have tried to get the fluidity and surprise of image connection, the simultaneity of film montage, into painting.

For me, art history is like a feather bed – you fall into it and it catches you.

I didn’t know anything about conceptual art when I left Kansas. I went to Cal Arts to be a painter, but the exciting stuff was happening elsewhere, so I took a holiday from painting for a few years.

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