1802 quotes by critics for you to enjoy

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

Auction houses run a rigged game. They know exactly how many people will be bidding on a work and exactly who they are. In a gallery, works of art need only one person who wants to pay for them. Jerry Saltz

Work Art Game People Will Pay Run Exactly Only Know Bidding Houses Auction How How Many People Person Wants Them Gallery Who Many Works Rigged Need

Only an artist as preternaturally acute and copacetic, as oddly visionary and just odd as Richard Artschwager, would be able to lay out the whole course of human evolution and have it make some kind of sense while also seeming like a dazzling insight. Jerry Saltz

Sense Visionary Evolution Out Kind Would Would-Be Able Insight Some Seeming Only Lay Like Dazzling Also Make Course Odd Oddly Artist Human Just While Human Evolution Richard Whole Acute

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is unsurpassed at presenting more than 50 centuries of work. I go there constantly, seeing things over and over, better than I've ever seen them before. Jerry Saltz

Work Art Better Seen Before Constantly Seeing More Over Go Metropolitan Than Them Centuries Ever Things Presenting Museum

New Yorkers only cross water for visual culture if the water is an ocean. The East River throws us for a huge loop. If we started going to Queens and the Bronx for visual culture, many of our rent, space, and crowding problems would be over indefinitely. Jerry Saltz

Culture Water Space Problems Ocean Our Indefinitely East Bronx Visual Would Would-Be Cross Only Throws River Over New Loop Rent Queens Huge Going New Yorkers Us Many Started

If the Frieze Art Fair catches on, I imagine at least two great things happening. First, we will once again have a huge art fair in town that isn't too annoying to go to. More importantly, Frieze may finally show New Yorkers that we can cross our own waters for visual culture. That would change everything. Jerry Saltz

Art Great Change Culture Great Things Will First Own Too Waters Our Everything Once Finally Visual Would Cross More New Fair Town Annoying Least Importantly Go Huge May New Yorkers Happening Again Show Things Two Imagine

Artists working for other artists is all about knowing, learning, unlearning, initiating long-term artistic dialogues, making connections, creating covens, and getting temporary shelter from the storm. Jerry Saltz

Learning Other Temporary About Long-Term Knowing Making Shelter Getting Artistic Artists Storm Creating Working Connections

Among living artists, George Condo may be the most embraced by the powers that be. Jerry Saltz

Living Embraced Most Powers George Condo May Artists Among

Think of an abstract painting as very, very low relief - a thing, not a picture. Jerry Saltz

Picture Painting Think Relief Abstract Very Low Thing

I don't plan out my visits rigorously, but I do have a list of about 125 New York galleries, alternative spaces, museums, and so forth that I visit regularly. That's the closest thing I have to a strategy: I go to a lot of places, many that artists don't visit. Jerry Saltz

Strategy Visit Out Visits About New Alternative Go Lot York Closest List Closest Thing Artists New York Spaces Places Plan Galleries Forth Regularly Many Thing Museums

Quotes by Critics