To have any knowledge of the contemporary art world of the last 40 years is to know David Salle. Part of a group of purely independent, boot-strapping New York painters that followed in the wake of pop art, minimalism, and post painterly abstraction, Salle seemingly sprung up out of nowhere, rapidly becoming one of the most successful contemporary painters of his generation. A mild-mannered kid from a cultured, middle-class Jewish family in Wichita, Kansas, ascended suddenly to the summit of the contemporary painting world. He has been an enigma ever since. Part of it was fortuitous timing. Salle landed smack in the middle of New York’s 1980s painting scene, after training under the watchful eye of gentle giant John Baldessari at Cal Arts. The decade had gotten off to a wild start with Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, the first bona fide “art stars” after Warhol, and it would soon be followed by Salle’s generation: Julian Schnabel, Eric Fischl, Jeff Koons among them. All were brashly individualistic, all were carving out a new stylistic approach, and all were breaking sales records. Salle’s rise as part of this brood of misfits was probably the most meteoric. Unlike his relentlessly extroverted peers, however, he was reserved, cryptic, as cool and undecipherable as his canvases.

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