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Being critical of art is a way of showing art respect.

Jerry Saltz

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Jerry Saltz
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 19
Art Critic
Art Historian
Historian
Journalist
Oak Park
Illinois
Showing
Critical
Respect
Art
Way

More quotes by Jerry Saltz

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Abstraction is one of the greatest visionary tools ever invented by human beings to imagine, decipher, and depict the world.
Jerry Saltz
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I think that a lot of artists have succeeded in making what I might call curator's art. Everybody's being accepted, and I always want to say, Really? That's what you've come for? To make art that looks a lot like somebody else's art? If I am thinking of somebody else's art in front of your art, that's a problem.
Jerry Saltz
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Giant group events are distorting organisms: You can like and hate them in rapid succession.
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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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.
Jerry Saltz
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Anybody who writes knows the horrible, wonderful, beautiful foulness that comes every week. A lot of moaning, screaming agony - Oh my god, the deadline's coming.
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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Think of an abstract painting as very, very low relief - a thing, not a picture.
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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Put yourself in the position of an up-and-coming artist living in early-sixteenth-century Italy. Now imagine trying to distinguish yourself from the other artists living in your town: Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, or Titian. Is it any wonder that the Italian High Renaissance lasted only 30 years?
Jerry Saltz
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Auctions are bizarre combinations of slave market, trading floor, theatre and burlesque... a lot of people are going to be making a lot of excuses or maintaining that they were never part of this.
Jerry Saltz
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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
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Of course art world ethics are important. But museums are no purer than any other institution or business. Academics aren't necessarily more high-minded than gallerists.
Jerry Saltz
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All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners, the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture), the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog, and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism, idealism, and fantasy.
Jerry Saltz
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Everyone goes to the same exhibitions and the same parties, stays in the same handful of hotels, eats at the same no-star restaurants, and has almost the same opinions. I adore the art world, but this is copycat behavior in a sphere that prides itself on independent thinking.
Jerry Saltz
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I'm not for or against video - or any medium or style, for that matter.
Jerry Saltz
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Mission accomplished. The Museum of Modern Art's wide-open, tall-ceilinged, super-reinforced second floor was for all intents and purposes built to accommodate monumental installations and gigantic sculptures, should the need arise. It has arisen.
Jerry Saltz
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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
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The giant white cube is now impeding rather than enhancing the rhythms of art. It preprograms a viewer's journey, shifts the emphasis from process to product, and lacks individuality and openness. It's not that art should be seen only in rutty bombed-out environments, but it should seem alive.
Jerry Saltz
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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.
Jerry Saltz