David Salle Teaches Us How to See Anew, This Time Using a Private Collection Rich with Centuries’ Worth of Treasures

On a recent afternoon, at the two-story Hill Art Foundation in Chelsea, the collector J. Tomilson Hill and the artist David Salle stood in front of Salle’s Reliance (1985), a painting of a person, their arms bent a sharp angles, surrounded by a yellow field. To the right was a Rubens, the stoic Portrait of a Gentleman, Half-length, Wearing Black (1628–29). Across the way was Cecily Brown’s The use of blue in vertigo (2022) and Frank Auerbach’