David Salle working in his studio
photographed by Frenel Morris (2023)
"Modern art has always hungered for philosophical, theoretical, and verbal expression.
However, the theoretical and the philosophical can be counterproductive
if they constrain rather than liberate the imagination." - David Salle
I.
If Malcolm Mclaren learnt one lesson from art school it was that it's better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success:
"'I realised that by understanding failure you were going to be able to improve your condition as an artist. Because you were not going to fear failure you were going to embrace it and, in doing so, maybe break the rules and by doing that, change the culture and, possibly by doing that, change life itself.'" [a]
And I think we can call Jack Goldstein a flamboyant failure; a cool good-looking cat, whom Salle never saw "without a leather jacket and a cigarette" [b]; the kind of artist "who thinks he has to be the prickliest cactus in the desert" [153].
In 2003, he committed suicide (aged 57):
"The cliché would have it that gave all he had to his work, when it might be more accurate to say that apart from the work, there wasn't much in this life that he could claim as his own. [...] He was a man who had somehow failed to be 'made' by his experiences - he was only 'un-made' by them [...]" [155-156]
Of course, the posthumous part of his story is also familiar; "since his death, Jack has been lionized by a new generation of young artists who see in his rigid and strained sensibility a yearning for something clean and pure [...]" [156] [c].
In other words, he's what Nietzsche would call a posthumous individual ...
II.
Salle is clearly a fan of the young Frank Stella; an artist best known perhaps for his Black Paintings (1958-60), a series of twenty-four related works in a minimalist style that free painting from drawing:
"Stella instinctively understood something fundamental about painting: that it is made by covering a flat surface with paint [...] If a painting could be executed with a kind of internal integrity, the image - i.e., the meaning - would take care of itself." [165]
Some critics - and even some other artists - feared at the time that Stella's work marked the end of art. But, actually, it marked a fresh beginning; "after first stripping down painting to its essentials, the creator then populated the world with every manner of flora and fauna" [166].
And, ironically, by the end of his career Stella has become, says Salle, merely a decorative painter; one who is actually closer to painters in the art nouveau tradition, than to Malevich; one whose late works "still occasionally command our attention, even awe, but more often than not leave us with a feeling of a lot of energy being expended to no particular end, of being more trouble than they're worth" [170] - ouch!
III.
"Style reflects character" [172], says Salle.
And if there's a single sentence which brings home just how he and I philosophically differ, this is it. For one thing, it presupposes an underlying character - some kind of essential moral quality that is straightforwardly reflected in our manner, our behaviour, and our appearance.
I would say, on the contrary, that style - as a form of discipline and cruelty - shapes character and would refer to Nietzsche on this matter:
"To 'give style' to one's character - a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye." [d]
Style, in other words, is an art of existence involving not only a single taste, but what Foucault terms techniques of the self. That is to say, a set of voluntary actions by which individuals:
"not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria" [e].
IV.
Where Salle and I do agree, however, is on the question of appropriation - like him, I'm happy with such a practice; what is Torpedo the Ark if not a blog assembled largely of notes?
Ultimately, like James Joyce - according to David Markson - I'm "'quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man'" [177]. If nothing else, as Salle says, at least this succeeds in irritating a lot of people and, besides, the act of choosing what one steals and appropriates can be "in and of itself, in the right hands" [177] an art.
The greatest of appropriationists are alchemists: they transform materials. For they understand that by changing the context you create fresh meaning: "Even if you repaint, or reprint, something as close as possible to its model, you will end up making something new." [178]
When a critic says: 'They're someone else's ideas!' Simply reply: 'Yes, but they're mine too.'
V.
This is something I also agree with and which strikes me as important:
"We're taught to think of modernism [...] as a story of progress and up-to-dateness, a developmental stream that seems logical, even inevitable. But some of the most interesting painting exists in the margins, apart from the official story. [...] It's a question of temperament and talent, and also of context, rather than linear progress." [189]
Sometimes, one needs to travel back into art history, into antiqity, into mythology, in order to project "an updated version of the past into the present" [189] and learn how to live yesterday tomorrow (as Malcolm would say). And whether we call this retrofuturism or neoclassicism it pretty much means the same thing.
An artist, says, Salle, is ultimately "both himself and a distillation of everything relevant that preceded him" [191] [f].
VI.
Is contemporary art infantalised?
Salle seems to say as much (although he doesn't use this word):
"In the world of contemporary art, the quantity of work that depicts, appeals to, references, critiques, or mimics childood has reached critical mass. For the first time, the international style is not a matter of form or invention but one of content. And that content is all wrapped up with regression. The art public becomes excited by the same things that babies like: bright, shiny things; simple, rounded forms; cartoons; and, always, animals. Brightly colored or shiny and highly reflective; or soft, squishy, furry, pliable - huggable." [200]
What's going on?
Maybe, suggests Salle, it's compensatory for all the grown-up things that also define the age: "class war; government dysfunction; religious fundamentalism; the baking of the planet - take your pick, the list goes on" [199].
Maybe.
Though I very much doubt that's how D. H. Lawrence would view things. I suspect, rather, that he'd rage against the infantalisation of art and see it as a profoundly perverse form of corruption or decadence.
He'd also point to the curious fact that the perverted child artist is also an often gifted businessman, making a lot of money by turning the gallery space into a nursery and offering works that provide instant gratification and the promise of ice cream [g].
VII.
Is it true, as Salle suggests, that "the qualities we admire in people [...] are often the same ones we feel in art that holds our attention" [211]?
I mean, it's possible. But surely the most fascinating works of art possess (inhuman/daemonic) qualities that pass beyond admirable ...?
VIII.
Salle makes a distinction between pictorial art and presentational art; the first is all about self-expression; the latter is concerned with a set of cultural signifiers.
Of course, nothing in art is simply one thing or the other. It may be convenient to provisionally posit such a binary dictinction, but there is no either/or. But, having done so, it's probably right to say that presentational art has triumphed over the last fifty years; a fact that makes Salle's heart sink.
Why?
Because, says Salle, we end up with art that is simply commentary and lacks emotional power. One might even say such art lacks presence or what used to be called aura:
"Baldly put, a work of art was said to emanate this aura as a result of the transference of energy from the artist to the work, an aesthetic variant of the law of thermodynamics." [230]
The problem is, that's not just baldly put, it's badly put. In fact, it's a misunderstanding of the term aura - certainly as used by Walter Benjamin, who, in a famous essay written in 1936 defined it as an artwork's unique presence in time and space [h].
In other words, aura results from cultural context and is not something invested in the
work by the artist. Not for the first time, Salle is giving the latter too much credit; viewing the artist as a larger than life personality and the souce of mysterious energy; as one who is often unhampered by sanity but gifted with genius.
I'm not by any means opposed to artworks that exist as actual objects crafted by hand and full of auratic authenticity. But, unable to produce such myself - and without the means to buy such - I'm perfectly content to think of art primarily as something presented on a screen or printed on the page of a book or magazine.
And even Salle admits that, at least since Picasso, "how well a work reproduces plays a significant role in its popularity; the most acclaimed artists from the '60s, for instance, look fabulous in reproduction" [234].
He continues:
"This isn't to suggest that those works didn't also have tremendous physical presence, but the fact remains most people are primarily familiar with a work of art through a reproduction; those who have the good fortune of experiencing the painting firsthand are fewer in number, and those who have the luxury of actually living with it are very rare indeed." [234]
But still there are some works that look more compelling in a magazine or on a screen than sitting in a gallery space; this is what Salle terms art conceived as spectacle or as advertising; art that is ironically detached from its own form and exists happily as a pure image; art that is devoid of aura - but then, as Salle says: "It's a relief sometimes to let go of things that no longer serve." [239] [i]
Polished stainless steel (10 x 20 x 12.8 m)
Millennium Park, Chicago, USA.
Notes
[a] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 49.
In an address given to the New York Academy of Art in 2011, Salle says: "I think it's fair to say that failure is the last taboo in American culture. [...] It might just be my sensibility, but I've always been attracted to the idea of the noble failure; the attempt at something that was probably bound to fail at some point, but the contemplation of which is exciting nonetheless. But this archetype of the noble failure doesn't seem to have much currency anymore; in fact, it probably went out of fashion about the same time that the alienated hero was given a pink slip." [249]
McLaren wanted to destroy success; today, artists want to be popular and succeed in the market place. Salle seems okay with this; "sometimes the most poular art is also the best" [250] and if you're a genuine artist, money and fame won't greatly change what you do (nor the amount of time spent alone in the studio).
[b] David Salle, How to See (W. W. Norton, 2016), p. 154. All further page references to this work will be given directly in the post.
[c] Later, writing of Mike Kelly - another artist who topped himself (in 2012, and also aged 57, like Goldstein) - Salle says that suicide can't be trumped in its finality and thus "makes the survivors seem small" [159].
[d] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 290, p. 232.
[e] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1992), pp. 10-11.
[f] Later, in a piece on Francis Picabia, Salle writes that every generation wants to revisit and revise the past in some manner and that "letting the air out out of the story of linear progress" [197] was something that characterised the work of him and his contemporaries.
[g] According to Salle; the giant bean sculpture by Anish Kapoor - pictured above at the end of the this post - is a work that says, "'There will be ice cream'" [244]; one that is very large, very shiny, and, even though its hard and metallic to the touch, one that makes you "want to cuddle it" [199], or take a selfie standing in front, smiling.
[h] Benjamin's essay, 'The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction', can be found in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn (The Bodley Head, 2015), pp. 211-244.
See section II which opens with the lines: "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be."
[i] Salle goes on to add: "I have always found it a relief to let go of stuff that I only partly believe in. It makes me feel lighter, better." [239] I interpret this as saying the abandonment of ideals that weigh us down is a crucial aspect of overcoming the spirit of gravity.
To read part one of this post, click here.
To read part two of this post, click here.
To read notes on David Salle's Introduction to How to See 92016), click here.
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