David Salle - Under the Influence New York Friday, March 7, 2014 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    “Painting has a performative aspect to it – someone has to paint it.”
    - David Salle, 2011


    David Salle remains one of the most prominent painters working today. His style is always enigmatic and idiosyncratic, due in part to his particular use and distortion of found images and cultural references as inspiration for his own unique and evocative visual language.

    The present lot, Painting for HCA, from 2007, is an apt representation of Salle’s hybridizing style. The two female figures sit divergent to each other and also to the small wolf figure projecting out from the canvas. Sullen and withdrawn, the monochromatic figure to the right stands in sharp contrast to the whimsical and distortedly pornographic Manga figure on the left. Together, their juxtaposition and opposition creates a new pictorial dynamic that is emblematic of Salle’s art making practice. “It might sound simplistic, but I was really just trying to make what I thought was a new kind of beauty” (David Salle quoted in an interview with Emily Nathan, Don’t Understand me too quickly, Artnet, 2011).

139

Painting for HCA

2007
oil on linen, wood shelf, object
44 x 76 x 4 in. (111.8 x 193 x 10.2 cm.)
Signed, titled and dated "PAINTING FOR H.C.A. David Salle 2007" on the reverse.

Estimate
$60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for $75,000

Contact Specialist
Benjamin Godsill
Head of Sale bgodsill@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1256

Under the Influence

New York Auction 7 March 2014 2pm