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Jerry Saltz

Jerry Saltz Quotes

Art critic

Jerry Saltz is a renowned art critic, born in March 1951. His career began in the 1980s, and he is known for his unique artistic perspective and critical style. Saltz's work covers a wide range of fields from modern art to contemporary art, and his reviews are frequently published in magazines such as The New Yorker.

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Famous Jerry Saltz Quotes

“I am all for art's finding a large audience. But the way that's happening now, with big works filling big galleries and bigger shows, is mostly stopping statements from being made. Or heard. Or talked about. Or really examined. It's watering things down.”

Way Art Made Shows Bigs Audience Heard Findings Happenings Bigger Statements Stopping Filling Gallery

Author:Jerry Saltz

“The debut show, “Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary,” is supposed to be about how artists reuse humble or unusual materials. There’s good work here, but much of what’s on view is actually more about obsession and repetition: a couch made out of 3,500 quarters, a necklace composed of 100 handgun triggers. The building, too, seems caught between wanting to be an object of decorative delectation and making an architectural statement.”

“Almost all institutions own a lot more art than they can ever show, much of it revealing for its timeliness, genius, or sheer weirdness.”

Art Shows Genius Institutions Sheer Revealing Weirdness Timeliness

Author:Jerry Saltz

“'Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era,' the Whitney Museum's 40th-anniversary trip down counterculture memory lane, provides moments of buzzy fun, but it'll leave you only comfortably numb. For starters, it may be the whitest, straightest, most conservative show seen in a New York museum since psychedelia was new.”

May Art Moments Shows Fun Memories New York Summer Conservative Eras Museums Psychedelic Lanes Numb Starters Whitney Counterculture Counter Culture Memory Lane 40th Anniversary

Author:Jerry Saltz

“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.”

Has Beens Art Facts Shows Groups Modern Painting Lows Art Is Bars Contemporary Collections Museums Facts Of Life Modern Art

Author:Jerry Saltz

“I don't often go to curator or artist walk-throughs of exhibitions. For a critic, it feels like cheating. I want to see shows with my own eyes, making my own mistakes, viewing exhibitions the way most of their audience sees them.”

Way Want Feels Shows Eye Artist My Own Walks Mistake Audience Critics Cheating Exhibitions Curator

Author:Jerry Saltz

“I see 30 to 40 gallery shows a week, and no matter what kind of mood I'm in, no matter how bad the art is, I almost always feel better afterward. I can learn as much from bad art as from good.”

Feels Kind Art I Can Matter Shows Week Art Is No Matter What Mood Feel Better Gallery

Author:Jerry Saltz

“I see around 100 shows a month, going from Niketown-size palaces where you feel like yelling, to storefronts in Bushwick. Each has to pay the bills; keep artists happy; and cope with collectors (oy!), curators (ay-yi-yi), critics (woo-hoo!), and occasionally plumbers. That their fiscal life often hangs in the balance only adds to the energy.”

Feels Shows Artist Energy Pay Months Balance Bills Add Critics Size Palaces Collectors Yelling Plumber Curator

Author:Jerry Saltz

“I wish I could write about shows outside New York. I often feel like the last person to know anything, because I almost never get to leave town, and when I do, I tend to go for three days max. Seeing between 30 and 40 shows a week in 100 or so galleries and museums takes up nearly all my time.”

Knows Feels Writing Persons Shows Lasts Three Wish Seeing Week New York Towns My Time Museums Gallery Max

Author:Jerry Saltz

“I'm noticing a new approach to art making in recent museum and gallery shows. It flickered into focus at the New Museum's 'Younger Than Jesus' last year and ran through the Whitney Biennial, and I'm seeing it blossom and bear fruit at 'Greater New York,' MoMA P.S. 1's twice-a-decade extravaganza of emerging local talent.”

Years Art Shows Lasts Jesus Greater Focus Seeing Talent New York Bears Approach Fruit Decades Locals Ran Museums Last Year Emerging Gallery Noticing Whitney New Approach Art Making

Author:Jerry Saltz

“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.”

Ifs Years Art Two Shows Would Be Rooms Gone Months Periods Works Of Art Devoted Gallery Two Months

Author:Jerry Saltz

“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.”

Ifs Firsts May Art Two Shows Culture Water Imagine Huge Happenings Fairs Crosses Towns Great Things Visuals Annoying New Yorkers

Author:Jerry Saltz

“Kinkade's paintings are worthless schmaltz, and the lamestream media that love him are wrong. However, I'd love to see a museum mount a small show of Kinkade's work. I would like the art world and the wider world to argue about him in public, out in the open.”

World Art Shows Media Painting Arguing Museums Worthless Art World

Author:Jerry Saltz

“Living and working for four decades in a Bologna apartment and studio he shared with his unwed sisters, Morandi painted little but bottles, boxes, jars, and vases. Yet like that of Chardin and the underappreciated William Nicholson, Morandi's work seems to slow down time and show you things you've never seen before.”

Littles Shows Seems Four Boxes Studios Decades Bottles Apartment Slow Down Jars Vases Nicholson Down Time Bologna

Author:Jerry Saltz

“Of all the biennials, triennials, quadrennials, internationals, and massive group shows, Documenta, established in 1955 and held once every five years in Kassel, Germany, is seen as the most serious. A statement show.”

Years Shows Five Groups Serious Statements Germany Five Years Massive

Author:Jerry Saltz

“Urs Fischer specializes in making jaws drop. Cutting giant holes in gallery walls, digging a crater in Gavin Brown's gallery floor in 2007, creating amazing hyperrealist wallpaper for a group show at Tony Shafrazi: It all percolates with uncanny destructiveness, operatic uncontrollability, and barbaric sculptural power.”

Shows Cutting Groups Wall Creating Holes Giants Brown Gallery Digging Barbaric Uncanny Fischer Destructiveness Craters

Author:Jerry Saltz

“When the purse strings tighten up at museums, the institutions usually cut back and cancel shows. That's exactly the wrong reaction. In fact, now is a good time for them to loosen up - a chance to breathe and experiment a little - and go for the juicy solution lurking in their own basements.”

Littles Facts Shows Chance Cutting Solutions Institutions Breathe Experiments Reactions Good Times Strings Museums Purses Basements Lurking Juicy

Author:Jerry Saltz

About the Author

Born: March 19, 1951
Known for: Art critic
Quotes: 212

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