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Early-twentieth-century abstraction is art's version of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. It's the idea that changed everything everywhere: quickly, decisively, for good.

Jerry Saltz

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Jerry Saltz
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 19
Art Critic
Art Historian
Historian
Journalist
Oak Park
Illinois
Idea
Version
Art
Versions
Ideas
Quickly
Everything
Everywhere
Decisively
Good
Early
Relativity
Theory
Einstein
Changed
Twentieth
Century
Abstraction

More quotes by Jerry Saltz

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Sometimes good art jumps out at me most of the time I see bad art, or see nothing at all and just drift, feeling weird, pretending to be fine.
Jerry Saltz
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Make an enemy of jealousy and envy. As fast and soon as you can…. The art world is high school with money.
Jerry Saltz
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In art, scandal is a false narrative, a smoke screen that camouflages rather than reveals. When we don't know what we're seeing, we overreact.
Jerry Saltz
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The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years.
Jerry Saltz
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Turns out Picasso's passion for uncertainty, mystery, and the thrill of life never ended.
Jerry Saltz
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Once artists are expected to shock, it's that much harder for them to do so.
Jerry Saltz
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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
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I have a soft spot for art that, in terms of subject matter and material, is in bad taste.
Jerry Saltz
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Ofili is still a champion. It would be a huge mistake to think otherwise.
Jerry Saltz
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When museums are built these days, architects, directors, and trustees seem most concerned about social space: places to have parties, eat dinner, wine-and-dine donors. Sure, these are important these days - museums have to bring in money - but they gobble up space and push the art itself far away from the entrance.
Jerry Saltz
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Anyone who relishes art should love the extraordinary diversity and psychic magic of our art galleries. There's likely more combined square footage for the showing of art on one New York block - West 24th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues - than in all of Amsterdam's or Hamburg's galleries.
Jerry Saltz
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Many things happened in the sixties, but the period is no more significant, better, or more 'political' than today. It's time to turn the page.
Jerry Saltz
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First let me report that the art in the Barnes Collection has never looked better. My trips to the old Barnes were always amazing, but except on the sunniest days, you could barely see the art. The building always felt pushed beyond its capacity.
Jerry Saltz
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The art gods cooked up something special for James Ensor.
Jerry Saltz
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Kinkade estimated that one of his paintings hung in every twenty homes in America. Yet the art world unanimously ignores or reviles him. Me included.
Jerry Saltz
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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
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Jeffrey Deitch is the Jeff Koons of art dealers. Not because he's the biggest, best, or the richest of his kind. But because in some ways he's the weirdest (which is saying a lot when you're talking about the wonderful, wicked, lovable, and annoying creatures known as art dealers).
Jerry Saltz
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It's art that pushes against psychological and social expectations, that tries to transform decay into something generative, that is replicative in a baroque way, that isn't about progress, and wants to - as Walt Whitman put it - 'contain multitudes.'
Jerry Saltz
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Energy and art go where they will.
Jerry Saltz
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Giorgio Morandi's paintings make me think that artists may not totally choose, or even control, their subjects or style.
Jerry Saltz