For me, art history is like a feather bed - you fall into it and it catches you. — David Salle Copy Share Image
“good art illustrates anything at all, it’s likely to be a story you didn’t even know needed telling.” — David Salle Copy Share Image
“The late sculptor Ken Price put it best: “Nothing I can say is going to improve how it looks.” — David Salle Copy Share Image
What if everything in a museum is crap? It's entirely possible; it's not the end of the world. — David Salle Copy Share Image
I have to say, that's pretty typical for artists, kind of embarrassingly typical for artists that everything is all about selection. — David Salle Copy Share Image
As a young person, you have no fixed address, no studio, no money for materials, so I made things sort of on… — David Salle Copy Share Image
What most paintings do is give you a path for your eye to move around. The painting actually tells your eye, go… — David Salle Copy Share Image
I started when I was nine. Really, everything I know about color theory, composition, drawing, and painting, I learned when I was… — David Salle Copy Share Image
My father had wanted to be a commercial artist. He got as far as being a photographer in the army in World… — David Salle Copy Share Image
Since I moved six or seven times the first year I was in New York, I had to be able to roll… — David Salle Copy Share Image
“How a painter treats this edge is the real subject of realist painting; how the brush behaves in the vicinity of an… — David Salle Copy Share Image
“One way to look at a painting—and I use that word as shorthand for visual art in general—is to notice as you… — David Salle Copy Share Image
I think people have to be given - or take - the permission to say that something is nothing. Just because it's… — David Salle Copy Share Image
I was actually dumbfounded by how some artists talked to each other. For example, it was a normal night at a bar,… — David Salle Copy Share Image
“Art is more than a sum of cultural signs: It is a language both direct and associative, and has a grammar and… — David Salle Copy Share Image
I think a good painting or a good work of art does many things it wants, I mean, maybe 15 or 20… — David Salle Copy Share Image
When I first came to New York, I knew some painters older than myself. I was kind of the kid who was… — David Salle Copy Share Image
People are still making paintings. People are still enjoying paintings, looking at paintings. Paintings still have something to tell us. There's a… — David Salle Copy Share Image
There are so many different ways to talk and think about art. We just spoke about when attitude becomes form. But when… — David Salle Copy Share Image
I feel like it's not so much a tradition as a system that has been codified over the centuries starting in the… — David Salle Copy Share Image
I think it's what any artist would want: to feel like their work can be taken in on a level of experience… — David Salle Copy Share Image
I was in a group show at a museum in Torino, a lot of American artists installed in a floor of this… — David Salle Copy Share Image
Artists talk about art in sort of straightforward terms, more like the way you talk about plumbing fixtures. Does it function well?… — David Salle Copy Share Image
There was a review by Fairfield Porter from the 1950s about Mark Rothko, one of the more hallowed names in American art.… — David Salle Copy Share Image
I didn't know anything about conceptual art when I left Kansas. I went to Cal Arts to be a painter, but the… — David Salle Copy Share Image
I feel that the only thing that really matters in art and life is to go against the tidal wave of literalism… — David Salle Copy Share Image
“Artists, on the other hand, talk to determine what works, what does not, and why. Their focus is more on the micro;… — David Salle Copy Share Image
I feel like all the American artists are aesthetically not very interesting and mired in a complaining relationship to its own culture,… — David Salle Copy Share Image
Art is something someone made. It's a product of human endeavor. As such, it's not that different from having a conversation with… — David Salle Copy Share Image
Really it becomes a question of architecture. How do you move people through a space and allow them to have an experience?… — David Salle Copy Share Image
There were successful ways of expressing the attitude and less successful ways. I think that spirit is very much alive today actually.… — David Salle Copy Share Image
What most paintings do is give you a path for your eye to move around. The painting actually tells your eye, go here, now… — David Salle Copy Share
I've always read, I've always admired writers and was lucky really to meet some extraordinary ones and become friends. Certain times you just like… — David Salle Copy Share
Truth is, I didn't know what the hell I was doing when I got out of Cal Arts. I think I wasted a lot… — David Salle Copy Share
I feel that the only thing that really matters in art and life is to go against the tidal wave of literalism and literal-mindedness-to… — David Salle Copy Share
Since I moved six or seven times the first year I was in New York, I had to be able to roll up the… — David Salle Copy Share
People are still making paintings. People are still enjoying paintings, looking at paintings. Paintings still have something to tell us. There's a way of… — David Salle Copy Share
I feel like all the American artists are aesthetically not very interesting and mired in a complaining relationship to its own culture, whereas the… — David Salle Copy Share
I think people have to be given - or take - the permission to say that something is nothing. Just because it's in a… — David Salle Copy Share
There are so many different ways to talk and think about art. We just spoke about when attitude becomes form. But when I was… — David Salle Copy Share
I started when I was nine. Really, everything I know about color theory, composition, drawing, and painting, I learned when I was a kid. — David Salle Copy Share
If you go to a concert, you will notice, is it loud? Is the music fast? Is it predominately strings or brass? There are… — David Salle Copy Share
I was actually dumbfounded by how some artists talked to each other. For example, it was a normal night at a bar, nothing very… — David Salle Copy Share
What if everything in a museum is crap? It's entirely possible; it's not the end of the world. — David Salle Copy Share
“good art illustrates anything at all, it’s likely to be a story you didn’t even know needed telling.” — David Salle Copy Share
“How a painter treats this edge is the real subject of realist painting; how the brush behaves in the vicinity of an edge gives… — David Salle Copy Share
