This is not a book about how to see. But its subtitle is a fairly accurate summation of what you’ll get. In some thirty-three essays published across many years in various fora (mostly art magazines), David Salle does a lot of looking at art, a modicum of thinking about art, and a significant amount of talking (i.e. writing) about art. Salle is a highly respected artist himself. He’s the real business. He knows his stuff from paint brush to French theory, from drawing room to board room. And along the way he’s got to know (and like, or at least respect) nearly everyone he eventually writes about (because there’s no point writing about the other guys). Which isn’t to say that he isn’t at times critical of what his friends (or he, himself) produce. But for the most part he is typically appreciating here (as opposed to chastising), noting something he’s overlooked before, drawing connections that help him make sense of what he is seeing. And in explicating these observations, he does, in a way, help the reader see things too. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, following his example, that if I too had spent a lifetime producing and exhibiting and writing about art subsequent to “halcyon days” at CalArt while obtaining my MFA, I too might see things in much the way Salle does. But I suspect I wouldn’t be able to write about it so charmingly.

And it is the writing here that really stands out. With easy erudition, personal anecdotes, and bon mots galore, Salle does the heavy lifting for the reader. Even of the many artists here whose work I do not know at all well, I felt that I learned something vital, or at least interesting. Although Salle abjures the language of theory, he is clearly familiar with it. And his anti-theory stance can only go so far before it begins to cultivate a theoretical language of its own. Nevertheless, most of the writing here is refreshingly accessible and engaging whether or not you end up agreeing with Salle’s opinions, a point on which he is not insistent.

Definitely worth reading. ( )