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Quote by 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.”

Quote by Jerry Saltz

Author

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. more

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“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

“Imagine it's 1981. You're an artist, in love with art, smitten with art history. You're also a woman, with almost no mentors to look to; art history just isn't that into you. Any woman approaching art history in the early eighties was attempting to enter an almost foreign country, a restricted and exclusionary domain that spoke a private language.”

Looks Art Country Artist Language Imagine Spokes Mentor Domain Attempting Eighty Art History Foreign Countries Smitten

Author:Jerry Saltz

“In some ways Lawler is a conceptual Diane Arbus. She's a stalker who takes advantage of situations. She pulls back curtains, causing normal things to look freakish and the freakish to turn mundane.”

Way Looks Turns Situation Normal Advantage Curtains Mundane Normal Things

Author:Jerry Saltz

“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.”

Mean America Artist Culture Attention Happened Groups Productions Pay Attention Visuals Vietnam Seventies No Money Reproduction Watergate

Author:Jerry Saltz

“It is not possible to overstate the influence of Paul Cezanne on twentieth-century art. He's the modern Giotto, someone who shattered one kind of picture-making and invented a new one that the world followed.”

World Kind Art Influence Modern Century Twentieth Century Shattered Cezanne Giotto

Author:Jerry Saltz

“It took me twenty years to get Steven Parrino's work. From the time I first saw his art, in the mid-eighties, I almost always dismissed it as mannered, Romantic, formulaic, conceptualist-formalist heavy-metal boy-art abstraction.”

Years Firsts Art Boys Saws Twenties Heavy Metals Abstraction Eighty Heavy Metal

Author:Jerry Saltz