Salman Toor
August 22, 2022 10:57 PM Subscribe
Lahore born, NYC based, Salman Toor is quickly becoming one of the most recognizable painters working today. Recently profiled in The New Yorker, Salman Toor is not just having a moment but a long series of them.
Although Salman started out making academic, old master style paintings, he has become most well-known for painting his hip, multiethnic queer friends bathed in a recognizable emerald green light (a color he describes as being both warm and cool at times and also "poisonous"). In an insightful talk for his first solo show with the Whitney Museum, he calls his characters "puppets of cultural transformation... whose bodies move between being recognizable types of people who live in Western urban culture, and being unknown strangers from the developing world." At times, danger seems to lurk in the background, "a sense that a world of utter intolerance and violence is just under the surface... but also hopefully a burgeoning queer network of solidarity, love, and friendship." And, he reminds us, "I like to think they are funny, too."
But his paintings remain in communication with his old inspirations, as seen in his contribution to the Frick show Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters (watch a conversation with Salman on that show here)
Here is a New York Review of Books review of his solo Whitney show.
In an episode of the podcast Tell Me About Your Father, Salman discusses growing up in Lahore and attending the all-boys prep school where he met many of his closest friends, including his partner the singer Ali Sethi, as chronicled in detail in the New Yorker profile.
The Baltimore Museum of Art is running a show called No Ordinary Love of Salman's art until October.
And lastly, a lovely, quiet video of Salman at work in his studio.
Although Salman started out making academic, old master style paintings, he has become most well-known for painting his hip, multiethnic queer friends bathed in a recognizable emerald green light (a color he describes as being both warm and cool at times and also "poisonous"). In an insightful talk for his first solo show with the Whitney Museum, he calls his characters "puppets of cultural transformation... whose bodies move between being recognizable types of people who live in Western urban culture, and being unknown strangers from the developing world." At times, danger seems to lurk in the background, "a sense that a world of utter intolerance and violence is just under the surface... but also hopefully a burgeoning queer network of solidarity, love, and friendship." And, he reminds us, "I like to think they are funny, too."
But his paintings remain in communication with his old inspirations, as seen in his contribution to the Frick show Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters (watch a conversation with Salman on that show here)
Here is a New York Review of Books review of his solo Whitney show.
In an episode of the podcast Tell Me About Your Father, Salman discusses growing up in Lahore and attending the all-boys prep school where he met many of his closest friends, including his partner the singer Ali Sethi, as chronicled in detail in the New Yorker profile.
The Baltimore Museum of Art is running a show called No Ordinary Love of Salman's art until October.
And lastly, a lovely, quiet video of Salman at work in his studio.
I've seen his paintings all over tumblr and had no context - what a great deep dive into both their influences and their personal meaning, especially the double sided Ness of that green light..m.
posted by MarianHalcombe at 4:20 AM on August 23, 2022
posted by MarianHalcombe at 4:20 AM on August 23, 2022
If you like his visual style, you may also like James Owens' work.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:06 AM on August 23, 2022
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:06 AM on August 23, 2022
These are just really nice.
It's funny, that "Fag Puddle" one in the New Yorker reminds me a lot of some kind of forties/fifties-ish surrealist/social painting, like a Cadmus maybe. Where elements of surrealism persisted past the twenties but moved away from the totally fantastic or psychoanalytic.
I am an art ignoramus (but I know what I like) so this is all just free-associating and not an actual assertion about anything real in the art.
The Myron Kunin collection at the MIA has a lot of paintings from about the thirties through the early seventies that have similar "off" colors and feeling of, I dunno, the fantastic real and the same sense of being mid-narrative. (Also a number of paintings by gay artists - there are two Tookers and a significant Cadmus, for starts.) I bet Kunin would have collected the heck out of this guy.
Does illustrate that you need to have a lot of family and social support to really make it as an artist in billionaire New York now.
posted by Frowner at 7:18 AM on August 23, 2022
It's funny, that "Fag Puddle" one in the New Yorker reminds me a lot of some kind of forties/fifties-ish surrealist/social painting, like a Cadmus maybe. Where elements of surrealism persisted past the twenties but moved away from the totally fantastic or psychoanalytic.
I am an art ignoramus (but I know what I like) so this is all just free-associating and not an actual assertion about anything real in the art.
The Myron Kunin collection at the MIA has a lot of paintings from about the thirties through the early seventies that have similar "off" colors and feeling of, I dunno, the fantastic real and the same sense of being mid-narrative. (Also a number of paintings by gay artists - there are two Tookers and a significant Cadmus, for starts.) I bet Kunin would have collected the heck out of this guy.
Does illustrate that you need to have a lot of family and social support to really make it as an artist in billionaire New York now.
posted by Frowner at 7:18 AM on August 23, 2022
I read the New Yorker article and it is delightful. I can't remember the last time I read a profile and thought I would enjoy the shit out of having dinner with this person.
posted by medusa at 8:12 AM on August 23, 2022
posted by medusa at 8:12 AM on August 23, 2022
More of a Tooker than a Cadmus, and v much part of the new figuration---there is something interesting that many of the new figuraiton painters are sexual or gender minoirty (Gribbon, Yuskavage, Edelman, Dupuy-Spencer, Cudahy)and the person that he goes to visit, in the article is a v straight white man....i wonder what that means?
posted by PinkMoose at 8:25 AM on August 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by PinkMoose at 8:25 AM on August 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Side note: Just looked up the author of the New Yorker article, and he was born in... 1925.
posted by Corduroy at 8:44 AM on August 23, 2022
posted by Corduroy at 8:44 AM on August 23, 2022
I didn’t know this artist, thanks for sharing! Archive link for the New Yorker article.
posted by ellieBOA at 8:47 AM on August 23, 2022
posted by ellieBOA at 8:47 AM on August 23, 2022
Along with Salman Toor, Louis Fratino is another favorite contemporary gay painter of mine.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:04 AM on August 23, 2022
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:04 AM on August 23, 2022
Is fabulous from fable? If so, I would call these paintings fabulous. Hallucinatory, instructive, speaking from a common voice and for the people. Cool stuff.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 10:04 AM on August 23, 2022
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 10:04 AM on August 23, 2022
Courduroy, Tomkins has been writing about art in the nyer for almost five decades, it's usually a sign someone is finally established when he gets to them. Like a lot of nyer writing, he is good at small social detail over aesthetics---his 2008 collection Lives of the Artist is a good start, and there is an excessive six volume collection from Phiadon with the same title from 2019.
posted by PinkMoose at 12:55 PM on August 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by PinkMoose at 12:55 PM on August 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
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