77 Jerry Saltz Quotes for You to Enjoy

Jerry Saltz

American Critic

Born: Feb 19, 1951

Art Artists People Work World You

Related authors: George Steiner Henry Louis Gates James Wolcott Kimberly Guilfoyle Margaret Fuller Pauline Kael Roger Ebert bell hooks

Turns out Picasso's passion for uncertainty, mystery, and the thrill of life never ended. Jerry Saltz

Life Passion Out Thrill Uncertainty Mystery Never Picasso Ended Turns

When I criticize Joseph Beuys or Francis Bacon, nobody calls those opinions anti-male. Putting female artists or their subject matter off-limits is itself sexist and limiting. Jerry Saltz

Matter Francis Francis Bacon Those Bacon Criticize Sexist Joseph Putting Nobody Calls Female Female Artists Opinions Limiting Subject Subject Matter Itself Artists

Billions of photos are shot every year, and about the toughest thing a photographer can do is invent an original, deeply personal, instantly recognizable visual style. In the early nineties, Wolfgang Tillmans did just that, transforming himself into a new kind of artist-photographer of modern life. Jerry Saltz

Life Invent Style Year Every Nineties Recognizable Kind Photographer Visual Photos About Toughest Instantly New Himself New Kind Did Personal Modern Just Modern Life Transforming Shot Billions Original Deeply Thing Early

As I went through 'This Progress,' one of two performance pieces by Tino Sehgal that transform Frank Lloyd Wright's emptied-out spiral into a dreamy Socratic-purgatorial journey, the museum literally fell away. I was suspended in some weird nonspace. Jerry Saltz

Journey Progress Frank Some Spiral Wright Through Weird Performance Fell Pieces Suspended Literally Transform Away Two Museum

Put yourself in the position of an up-and-coming artist living in early-sixteenth-century Italy. Now imagine trying to distinguish yourself from the other artists living in your town: Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, or Titian. Is it any wonder that the Italian High Renaissance lasted only 30 years? Jerry Saltz

Yourself Living Lasted Other Distinguish Raphael High Only Put Town Renaissance Italian Years Italy Up-And-Coming Wonder Michelangelo Trying Any Artist Artists Leonardo Your Now Imagine Position

Although I adore the Italian High Renaissance, I'd rather look at Mannerism. The former is ordered, integrated, otherworldly, and grandiose; it leaves you feeling hungry for something flawed and of-the-flesh. Jerry Saltz

You Feeling Hungry High Something Rather Adore Look Renaissance Although Leaves Integrated Italian Ordered Former Flawed Grandiose

Few contemporary artists mined the space between the ordinary and the strange better than Orozco did. Jerry Saltz

Strange Better Space Few Between Contemporary Than Did Artists Ordinary

One argument goes that recessions are good for female artists because when money flies out the window, women are allowed in the house. The other claims that when money ebbs, so do prospects for women. Jerry Saltz

Good Women Money Argument Other Claims Out Window Allowed Prospects House Because Female Female Artists Women Are Goes Artists Flies

In the seventies, a group of American artists seized the means not of production but of reproduction. They tore apart visual culture at a time of no money, no market, and no one paying attention except other artists. Vietnam and Watergate had happened; everything in America was being questioned. Jerry Saltz

Time Culture Money Watergate Group Other Market Everything Seventies Visual Seized Except Had No-One Attention Questioned America American Artists Being Happened Reproduction Apart Vietnam Means Production Paying

Pictures artists staged their own images or copied or cut out others already in existence. The viewer took them in separately, in sometimes paradoxical waves: an original image, then the manipulations of it, then the places where image and idea intersected. This created a crucial perceptual glitch that irony and understanding filled. Jerry Saltz

Sometimes Understanding Own Others Took Waves Out Paradoxical Perceptual Crucial Idea Pictures Existence Irony Artists Where Staged Places Them Cut Then Created Separately Viewer Original Filled Copied Image Images

Galleries needn't be exactly like White Columns purely because times are bad again. But the idea of this special space could - should - help shape what comes next. Jerry Saltz

Space White Bad Exactly Purely Could Shape Columns Idea Like Because Times Again Galleries Next Should Help Special

Much good art got made while money ruled; I like a lot of it, and hardship and poverty aren't virtues. The good news is that, since almost no one will be selling art, artists - especially emerging ones - won't have to think about turning out a consistent style or creating a brand. They'll be able to experiment as much as they want. Jerry Saltz

Art Good News Money Will Good News Made Poverty Style Experiment Think Virtues Ruled Consistent Out Able About Emerging No-One Almost Since Like Got Lot Selling Brand Artists Want While Much Turning Creating Good Art Hardship

The very paradigm of revolution, of right versus wrong, good versus bad, is a relic with no bearing on the present. Yet artists, exhibitions, and curators valorize the sixties. People who wrote about these artists 30 years ago still write about them in the same ways, often for the same magazines. Jerry Saltz

Good People Revolution Ways Paradigm Relic Bad Magazines About Bearing Write Wrong Wrote Still Exhibitions Years Years Ago Versus Very Same Often Artists Sixties Them Who Right Present

While a large segment of the art world has obsessed over a tiny number of stars and their prices, an aesthetic shift has been occurring. It's not a movement - movements are more sure of themselves. It's a change of mood or expectation, a desire for art to be more than showy effects, big numbers, and gamesmanship. Jerry Saltz

Art Change World Big Expectation Stars Mood Has-Been More Segment Prices Obsessed Over Sure Aesthetic Shift Been Effects Art World Than Tiny Movement Movements While Themselves Large Showy Desire Number Numbers

A saboteur in the house of art and a comedienne in the house of art theory, Lawler has spent three decades documenting the secret life of art. Functioning as a kind of one-woman CSI unit, she has photographed pictures and objects in collectors' homes, in galleries, on the walls of auction houses, and off the walls, in museum storage. Jerry Saltz

Life Art Walls Three Secret Spent Kind Photographed Collectors One-Woman Objects Pictures House She Documenting Houses Auction Off Decades Storage Galleries Theory Unit Homes Museum

Robert Rauschenberg was not a giant of American art; he was the giant. No American created so many aesthetic openings for so many artists. Jerry Saltz

Art Giant He Openings Robert Aesthetic American Artists Created Many

If only we could persuade galleries to observe a fallow period in which, for two months every other year, new and old works of art could be sold in back rooms and all main galleries would be devoted to revisiting shows gone by. Jerry Saltz

Art Old Year Gone Every Other Back Sold Months Would Would-Be Only Could Main Observe New Period Devoted Fallow Revisiting Which Galleries Rooms Persuade Works Shows Two

A canon is antithetical to everything the New York art world has been about for the past 40 years, during which we went from being the center of the art world to being one of many centers. Jerry Saltz

Art World Past Everything Has-Been About New Been Years Art World York New York Being Center Canon Centers Which Many

Chris Ofili's suave, stippled, visually tricked-out paintings of the nineties, with their allover fields of shimmering dots and clumps of dung, are like cave paintings of modern life. They crackle with optical cockiness, love, and massive amounts of painterly mojo. Jerry Saltz

Life Love Nineties Like Massive Suave Cave Optical Modern Modern Life Fields Dots Mojo Painterly Paintings Chris Amount

You can't prove Rembrandt is better than Norman Rockwell - although if you actually do prefer Rockwell, I'd say you were shunning complexity, were secretly conservative, and hadn't really looked at either painter's work. Taste is a blood sport. Jerry Saltz

Work You Conservative Better Say Secretly Complexity Rembrandt Looked Sport Although Prove Were Blood Norman Norman Rockwell Than Taste Either Prefer Really Painter Actually

A sad fact of life lately at the Museum of Modern Art is that when it comes to group shows of contemporary painting from the collection, the bar has been set pretty low. Jerry Saltz

The alchemy of good curating amounts to this: Sometimes, placing one work of art near another makes one plus one equal three. Two artworks arranged alchemically leave each intact, transform both, and create a third thing. Jerry Saltz

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