David Salle

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David Salle (born 1952) is an American painter and leading contemporary figurative artist.

David Salle was born in in Norman, Oklahoma. He gained a BFA and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied under John Baldessari. Salle’s work first came to public attention in New York in the early 1980s.

His paintings comprised what appeared to be randomly juxtaposed images, or images painted on top of each other with deliberately ham-fisted paint handling. His subject matter tended toward the popular, the gratuitous, and the pornographic, and was combined in ways that appeared deliberately incomprehensible. His work was called "cynical", "calculating", and "cold".

In the next few years he and his contemporaries — termed postmodern — achieved a succès de scandale with their work.

He also turned his hand to set and costume design, photography, and directing mainstream cinema.