There were successful ways of expressing the attitude and less successful ways. I think that spirit is very much alive today actually. That's what a certain generation of curators is alert to or on the look out for: an attitude. And it is a brilliant and moving spectacle when it happens. That suspension of disbelief is something that we all respond to. But it's hard to capture the butterfly without tearing the wings off of it.
David SalleReally it becomes a question of architecture. How do you move people through a space and allow them to have an experience? I, probably more than most people, suffer from museum fatigue. I always want to just stay still or sit in a chair and look at one thing, but that's not the experience of the museum.
David SalleArtists talk about art in sort of straightforward terms, more like the way you talk about plumbing fixtures. Does it function well? Does it bring the hot water up from the cellar efficiently, or does it lose too much thermodynamic energy in the process? Artists are also very ruthless with each other and can be very brutal in evaluating each other's work because their criteria is almost more mechanistic. Does it do what it's supposed to be doing in an efficient way? That doesn't mean that intention is not part of the conversation, but it's not the foreground.
David SalleThe pictures present an improvised view of life as normal. Life is shown as we think we see it but in fact never do. The pictures imitate life to find a way out.
David SalleWhat great comedians, great comic writers, great comic actors do is that they just read the headlines with the right eyebrow position and it's funny.
David SalleI was actually dumbfounded by how some artists talked to each other. For example, it was a normal night at a bar, nothing very momentous, when in walked a painter. The other painters at the bar had a bit of an attitude about it. One said to him, "You know, I'm tired of that feeling of hot air coming out from behind your work." And I thought, "Well, that's interesting." I didn't know you could even think something like that, let alone say it right to someone's face.
David Salle