School of presentation: David Salle on art direction and its discontents

ARTNEWS
By David Salle

Contemporary art is divided into two main camps. On the one side, we have the centuries-long continuity of work that is primarily pictorial in nature, and on the other, the growing body of work that is more presentational in attitude—that is, art that privileges intentionality and the delivery system, the context in which art appears. One type of art says, “Look at this,” while the other says, “Look at me looking at this,” or in a further evolution, “Look at me looking at you looking at this.” This is not a distinction between painting and non-painting. There are plenty of non-painters making work with an outer-directed energy combined with pictorial intelligence. [link]
A version of this text was recently published in How to See: Looking, Talking and Thinking About Art by David Salle. ©2016 David Salle. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.