David Salle: belief

Transcript context

…Why is it that Frank O’Hara has been so important to both you and Alex Katz? Alex painted Frank, as you probably know, right? Definitely. Frank was important to Alex for a number of reasons. Probably the most important reason is that Alex is a great consumer of and connoisseur of poetry generally, and New York School poetry in particular, and they were contemporaries and friends. It’s inconceivable that Alex wouldn’t have been interested in or close to Frank O’Hara. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet Frank O’Hara, but I discovered his poetry when I was a kid. It spoke to me for whatever reason. It’s very easy, as poetry goes, to grasp. He continues to epitomize something about that time and place of the late ’40s to the mid ’60s, late ’60s, which still remains a touchstone and is also still full of mystery and full of sensibility. Let’s say it’s where one finds the roots of a certain sensibility, which for me is still very much alive, maybe not for anybody else. He is the certain kind of painter’s poet par excellence. He is the poet of nouns, poet of things, the poet of appearances, and the poet of connections between things. In a way, he’s the perfect poet. It’s a list of names, but it’s more than a list of names. It’s what happened at the party, but it’s also about mortality. It’s about beauty, but it’s also about degradation. It’s very accessible and very musical. I don’t think it’s an accident. I think that many, many painters would like his work. Which is your favorite Preston Sturges movie and why?…

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