Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Jerry Saltz

Image
It took the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 50 years to wake up to Pablo Picasso. It didn't own one of his paintings until 1946, when Gertrude Stein bequeathed that indomitable quasi-Cubistic picture of herself - a portrait of the writer as a sumo Buddha - to the Met, principally because she disliked the Museum of Modern Art.
Jerry Saltz
Image
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.
Jerry Saltz
Image
Galleries began growing in both number and size in the late seventies, when artists who worked in lofts wanted to exhibit their work in spaces similar to the ones the art was made in.
Jerry Saltz
Image
The art world is an all-volunteer force. No one has to be here if he or she doesn't want to be, and we should be associating with anyone we want to.
Jerry Saltz
Image
I also take pleasure in the so-called negative power in Grotjahn's work. That is, I love his paintings for what they are not. Unlike much art of the past decade, Grotjahn isn't simply working from a prescribed checklist of academically acceptable, curator-approved 'isms' and twists.
Jerry Saltz
Image
Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I've heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast.
Jerry Saltz
Image
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
Image
I hate when dealers talk to me. I love dealers - they're some of our favorite people in the art world. But I hate if they do a sales pitch on me. I can't stand it.
Jerry Saltz
Image
Many say an art dealer running a museum is a 'conflict of interest.' But maybe the art world has lived an artificial or unintentional lie all of these years when it comes to conflicts of interest.
Jerry Saltz
Image
Craft is not a category it's a means. The folks running the museum [Museum of Arts and Design]are sharp, and they know this, but they are in a bind.
Jerry Saltz
Image
Probably only an art-worlder like me could assign deeper meaning to something as simple and silly as Tebowing. But, to us, anytime people repeat a stance or a little dance, alone or together, we see that it can mean something. Imagistic and unspoken language is our thing.
Jerry Saltz
Image
My nominee for Best Picture of the year - maybe the best picture ever, because it's essentially made up of and is an ecstatic love letter to all other movies - is Christian Marclay's endlessly enticing must-see masterpiece 'The Clock.'
Jerry Saltz
Image
When money and hype recede from the art world, one thing I won't miss will be what curator Francesco Bonami calls the 'Eventocracy.' All this flashy 'art-fair art' and those highly produced space-eating spectacles and installations wow you for a minute until you move on to the next adrenaline event.
Jerry Saltz
Image
I have a soft spot for art that, in terms of subject matter and material, is in bad taste.
Jerry Saltz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Batty as it sounds, subject and style may choose artists, through some unfathomable cosmic means. How else to explain that even artists who enjoy what they do can be perplexed or even horrified that they're doing it?
Jerry Saltz
Image
To me, nothing in the art world is neutral. The idea of 'disinterest' strikes me as boring, dishonest, dubious, and uninteresting.
Jerry Saltz
Image
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
Image
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.
Jerry Saltz