David Salle: evaluation

Transcript context

…If I think of some painters, when I see their works all together in the form of a major retrospective, I enjoy them more, and they make more sense to me. Roy Lichtenstein or Jasper Johns would be examples. There are other great painters. Cy Twombly — I saw a big retrospective of his work. I didn’t like it less, but when I walked out of it, I didn’t feel especially enriched. You may disagree on who belongs to what category, but what differentiates the artists who do much better when you see a retrospective of all their work together? What’s the extra thing you’re learning or gaining? It’s a very good question. You can almost divide artists into two categories: the ones who constantly evolve, constantly change, take on new challenges, even take on almost new identities versus the ones who don’t. I don’t think the ones who don’t are lesser necessarily or that they’re less good when they’re good, less profound when they’re profound, less deeply pleasurable when you engage with their work. But they’re definitely less rewarding as retrospective material because the work is more all of a piece. Everyone’s work is all of a piece, but all of a piece just in terms of its surface attributes. Yes, Cy, having found his process, his way of picture-making, varied in that process less, say, than Jasper, certainly less than Roy. Even Roy clung to the black outline throughout his entire career and up until the very end. If he had lived longer, we would have seen works where the outline itself was jettisoned, but that was the unifying principle of all of his work. Jasper is a really fascinating example, but I think quite rare in that early Jasper is very different from work of the ’70s, which is very different from the work of the ’80s, ’90s, et cetera. Yet it is unmistakable. When you see a painting by him from whatever date, it’s unmistakably his. But his concerns changed, his technique changed, his scale changed, certainly, his subject matter changed. The very idea of having subject matter changed. There’s just quite a lot of movement, and if it’s coherent and consistent and graspable as the expression of one personality, however diverse within that personality, it’s a very exhilarating experience to have. It’s also a question of the curator. The curator has to make the road map which one can follow. Now, we’re sitting here in your studio, surrounded by your paintings. You’re a relatively prolific painter, always working. What are the biggest just purely physical problems you encounter being a painter?…

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