David Salle

David Salle was born in Norman, Oklahoma in 1952. He earned his BFA and MFA from the California Institute of Art, where he studied under John Baldessari. Salle’s paintings are directly influenced by a number of seemingly unrelated images, taken from a variety of sources: advertising design, art history, popular culture. The resulting images are concentrated cultural references, often erotically themed.
Salle’s first solo exhibition created some controversy. The intrusive sexuality and jarring cultural commentary overwhelmed the palette of the contemporary viewer, only just becoming accustomed to being barraged by juxtaposed images. The Paris Review print is exemplary of Salle’s layering of artistic references. His work was in the 1993 Venice Biennale and in major retrospectives of the Whitney Museum.