David Salle Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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 insist on and live the life of the imagination.

  David Salle

  Art, Live Life, Imagination

  19 Copy quote

• The only thing worth doing is what's never been done before.

  David Salle

  Done, Originality

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• It's a mistake to ask a work of art to be all things to all people.

  David Salle

  Art, Mistake, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

  6 Copy quote

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

  David Salle

  Connections, Fluidity, Painting

  Interview with Robert Rosenblum, www.lehmannmaupin.com.

  12 Copy quote

• 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?

  David Salle

  Art, Different, Painter

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• What most paintings do is give you a path for your eye to move around. The painting actually tells your eye, go here, now go here, now go here, go here. So all you have to do is look at it, give it a few seconds, and your eye will start to move through the painting.

  David Salle

  Moving, Eye, Giving

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• The pictures present an improvised view of life as normal. Life is shown as we think we see it but in fact never do. The pictures imitate life to find a way out.

  David Salle

  Thinking, Views, Normal

  15 Copy quote

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

  David Salle

  Art, Fall, Bed

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

  13 Copy quote

• 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 being in the world that painting brings to us, that painters bring to the task that we absorb and are able to be in dialogue with. That's something that's part of us.

  David Salle

  People, World, Painting

  Source: www.pbs.org

  5 Copy quote

• I think people have to be given - or take - the permission to say that something is nothing. Just because it's in a museum doesn't mean it's anything.

  David Salle

  Mean, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Spend a day talking only in rhyme.

  David Salle

  Talking, Rhyme

  14 Copy quote

• People tend to remember and mentally classify work according to how it looks, sometimes oblivious to the underlying intent.

  David Salle

  People, Looks, Remember

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  David Salle

  Photography, Ideas, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  10 Copy quote

• There are so many different ways to talk and think about art. We just spoke about when attitude becomes form. But when I was a kid, I had these two art teachers, a couple, who were continuing a line of very classical, atelier art training, and they instilled in me a sensitivity to all the classical verities of line, shape, color, texture, and composition, which is only engaging if you're making two-dimensional objects.

  David Salle

  Teacher, Art, Attitude

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  9 Copy quote

• 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 of time not being bold enough, or still engaged in the questioning that you get into at school.

  David Salle

  Art, School, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  David Salle

  Art, Mean, Water

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  8 Copy quote

• If you go to a concert, you will notice, is it loud? Is the music fast? Is it predominately strings or brass? There are things we can all register, whether we are musicians or not. Painting's no different. Taking pleasure in projecting oneself into the painting is the act of looking. That's what looking is.

  David Salle

  Musician, Different, Painting

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• My focus was always toward imagery of some sort.

  David Salle

  Focus, Imagery

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• 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."

  David Salle

  Hard Work, College, House

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  13 Copy quote

• This is a little off subject, but I'm interested in those cases where someone is barking up the wrong tree, or misapplying their talent.

  David Salle

  Tree, Littles, Talent

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  9 Copy quote

• 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 people, and it grows out like a nautilus shell.

  David Salle

  People, Lucky, Extraordinary

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I was actually dumbfounded by how some artists talked to each other. For example, it was a normal night at a bar, nothing very momentous, when in walked a painter. The other painters at the bar had a bit of an attitude about it. One said to him, "You know, I'm tired of that feeling of hot air coming out from behind your work." And I thought, "Well, that's interesting." I didn't know you could even think something like that, let alone say it right to someone's face.

  David Salle

  Attitude, Tired, Artist

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

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

  David Salle

  Being In Love, Love Is, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  David Salle

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• There was a review by Fairfield Porter from the 1950s about Mark Rothko, one of the more hallowed names in American art. Porter says something like, "Yeah, Rothko paints rectangles of color. They have mass but no weight." That's not in any way a detraction, but it's a description. And it has nothing to do with the spiritual dimension. The main thing is as an intelligent viewer, to identify just what those things are that it does, that those rectangles do, and then not assume that they do these things over here. I don't know why that's challenging.

  David Salle

  Spiritual, Art, Intelligent

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

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