Quotes by

Jerry Saltz

Anyone who relishes art should love the extraordinary diversity and psychic magic of our art galleries. Theres 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 Amsterdams or Hamburgs galleries. – Jerry Saltz

Those who love him love that he sells the most art they take it as a point of faith that this proves Kinkade is the best. But his fans dont only rely on this supply-and-demand justification. They go back to values. – Jerry Saltz

Yes, 85 percent of the art you see isnt any good. But everyone has a different opinion about which 85 percent is bad. That in turn creates fantastically unstable interplay and argument. – Jerry Saltz

The reason the art world doesnt respond to Kinkade is because none – not one – of his ideas about subject-matter, surface, color, composition, touch, scale, form, or skill is remotely original. Theyre all cliche and already told. – Jerry Saltz

I also take pleasure in the so-called negative power in Grotjahns work. That is, I love his paintings for what they are not. Unlike much art of the past decade, Grotjahn isnt simply working from a prescribed checklist of academically acceptable, curator-approved isms and twists. – Jerry Saltz

Kinkades paintings are worthless schmaltz, and the lamestream media that love him are wrong. However, Id love to see a museum mount a small show of Kinkades work. I would like the art world and the wider world to argue about him in public, out in the open. – Jerry Saltz

Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. Ive 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

It is not possible to overstate the influence of Paul Cezanne on twentieth-century art. Hes the modern Giotto, someone who shattered one kind of picture-making and invented a new one that the world followed. – Jerry Saltz

Artschwagers art always involves looking closely at surfaces, questions what an object is, wants to make you forget the name of the thing youre looking at so that it might mushroom in your mind into something that triggers unexpected infinities. – Jerry Saltz

Poor Georgia OKeeffe. Death didnt soften the opinions of the art world toward her paintings. – Jerry Saltz

The greatest work of art about New York? The question seems nebulous. The citys magic and majesty are distilled in the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand. – Jerry Saltz

Early-twentieth-century abstraction is arts version of Einsteins Theory of Relativity. Its the idea that changed everything everywhere: quickly, decisively, for good. – Jerry Saltz

Too many younger artists, critics, and curators are fetishizing the sixties, transforming the period into a deformed cult, a fantasy religion, a hip brand, and a crippling disease. – Jerry Saltz

One argument goes that recessions are good for female artists because when money flies out the window, women are allowed in the house. The other claims that when money ebbs, so do prospects for women. – 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. – Jerry Saltz

Artists working for other artists is all about knowing, learning, unlearning, initiating long-term artistic dialogues, making connections, creating covens, and getting temporary shelter from the storm. – Jerry Saltz

Our culture now wonderfully, alchemically transforms images and history into artistic material. The possibilities seem endless and wide open. – Jerry Saltz

The secret of food lies in memory – of thinking and then knowing what the taste of cinnamon or steak is. – Jerry Saltz

Abstraction brings the world into more complex, variable relations it can extract beauty, alternative topographies, ugliness, and intense actualities from seeming nothingness. – Jerry Saltz

A canon is antithetical to everything the New York art world has been about for the past 40 years, during which we went from being the center of the art world to being one of many centers. – Jerry Saltz