David Salle: evaluation

Transcript context

…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? I like to paint at a certain scale. These pictures that we’re looking at now — they’re tall. Some of them are 10 feet tall, 10 feet square. Making a painting that size just requires a certain physical energy, reach, and stamina. It’s very different from making a 30-inch-high portrait. It becomes natural to me, that physical engagement with the canvas at a certain scale. It’s something that I’ve always done. I’ve always had that sense of scale in my work. Other artists might have a completely different sense of scale. Regardless, painting is a physical activity, and it requires concentration, obviously mental concentration, but also just physical stamina. I think I’ve said this other places: It is one of the things in life that you can get better at with the age, instead of worse, but you do reach a point where the physical body is a limitation, just how many hours a day you can work, how big you can work. When you walk through a museum as an artist, how is it you do that differently?…

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