American painter, born in Norman, Oklahoma. He studied under John *Baldessari at the California Institute of Arts, Valencia. When his painting was first seen widely in the early 1980s it was usually associated with the international *Neo-Expressionist tendency and usually coupled with the work of Julian *Schnabel. In fact, although the success of his work was part of a general revival of art world interest in painting during this period, the idea of ‘self-expression’ is particularly inappropriate to Salle, who is much closer to the stylistic pluralism of Sigmar *Polke to than the deliberate wildness of Georg *Baselitz. His paintings combine images from photographs and the history of art in a way that defies, at least for most commentators, any kind of coherent narrative.