David Salle

It’s a sunny afternoon in Sprüth Magers Gallery in Los Angeles, and the last remnants of a years-long construction project is just beginning to be cleared. The new David Geffen Galleries of LACMA are nearing their celebratory opening, and there is hopeful energy—between this and the upcoming opening of George Lucas’ Lucas Museum of Narrative Art—that the West Coast is establishing somewhat of an international reputation for the fine arts. L.A. might no longer just be a motion picture city, but a city of painting, sculpture, new media. The dawn of a new era, maybe? 

In this gallery, David Salle and I are talking about time management. We are surrounded by his paintings in his newly opened solo show, My Frankenstein, his first show in Los Angeles since 1997. I find that particularly surprising, not just because of his cinematic version of America and his place in the pantheon of The Pictures Generation, or because he went to art school here, but because 29 years is, simply, a long time. “People make a big deal about this, but I’ve been coming to L.A. pretty regularly for decades,” Salle tells me. “I haven’t shown here in a while—just never the right circumstances.”