If any artist could use the boost of a major museum retrospective right now, it’s David Salle. Stranded in the vast midcareer no-man’s-land bounded by a jacked-up commercial gallery career on one side and by doubts about his art-historical gravitas on the other, Salle gets his (second) break as the Stedelijk’s Dorine Mignot mounts a fifty-five-painting case for the former wunderkind’s staying power. Fitting that the flagship institution of a country where you can fire up a joint in a “coffee shop” should take a chance on a hot potato grown a little cold.
