Poverty is No Disgrace

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David Salle’s refusal to resolve disparate elements into a harmonious whole reflects a postmodernist world view that emerged in the 1980s. Modernism’s optimism, belief in progress and linear view of history no longer seemed valid in our post-industrial world. In Poverty Is No Disgrace, Salle presents a smorgasbord of images, styles and subjects from art history, raising questions about the role of painting in an image-saturated society. These include whether it is still possible to create a painting that does not reference past art and whether one style is superior to another. The nude, based on a photograph, questions the relationship of photography to painting, while the classic 1950s chair brings up the relative status and interdependence of the “fine” and “applied” arts.

Keywords

Found objects
American
Contemporary Art
Painting
Figure