David Salle

American painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He studied under John Baldessari and others at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA (1973–5). While working in the art department of a publisher of romance and pornographic magazines he gathered together photographs from the company’s archives, later using them as source material for his paintings…

Nudes in paintings are not the same as nudes in the world. It’s their relationship that’s interesting…the specificity of the poses in my paintings is much different really than that of the poses one sees in pornography." David Salle is not inviting the audience to voyerism. According to him, female nudes in paintings constitute abstract choreography rather than pornography. Salle bends the naked body to extreme positions while he observes its forms in different spaces and from strange perspectives. The female body becomes an object and forces the viewer to choose from a variety of ways of looking…

David Salle has taken the device of pastiche, which is central to modern art, and made it both the form and content of his work…

Works.

To be on the road of perversion, but not quite there…