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Quotes by

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

Ive always said that an art critic can put aside politics around art. – Jerry Saltz

Abstract Expressionism – the first American movement to have a worldwide influence – was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and youll find a would-be Willem de Kooning). – Jerry Saltz

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is unsurpassed at presenting more than 50 centuries of work. I go there constantly, seeing things over and over, better than Ive ever seen them before. – Jerry Saltz

I like that the art world isnt regulated. – Jerry Saltz

Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and youll find it. Its there in paintings of photographs, photographs of advertising, sculpture with ready-made objects, videos using already-existing film. – Jerry Saltz

Art is for anyone. It just isnt for everyone. Still, over the past decade, its audience has hugely grown, and thats irked those outside the art world, who get irritated at things like incomprehensibility or money. – 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

Art usually only makes the news in America when the subject is money. – Jerry Saltz