Art

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

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

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

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

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

A metaphysical tour de force of untethered meaning and involuting interlocking contrapuntal rhythms, The Clock is more than a movie or even a work of art. It is so strange and other-ish that it becomes a stream-of-consciousness algorithm unto itself – something almost inhuman. – Jerry Saltz

I dont know much about auctions. I sometimes go to previews and see art sardined into ugly rooms. Ive gawked at the gaudy prices, and gaped at well-clad crowds of happy white people conspicuously spending hundreds of millions of dollars. – Jerry Saltz

I love art dealers. In some ways, theyre my favorite people in the art world. Really. I love that they put their money where their taste is, create their own aesthetic universes, support artists, employ people, and do all of this while letting us see art for free. Many are visionaries. – Jerry Saltz

I see 30 to 40 gallery shows a week, and no matter what kind of mood Im in, no matter how bad the art is, I almost always feel better afterward. I can learn as much from bad art as from good. – Jerry Saltz

Jeffrey Deitch is the Jeff Koons of art dealers. Not because hes the biggest, best, or the richest of his kind. But because in some ways hes the weirdest (which is saying a lot when youre talking about the wonderful, wicked, lovable, and annoying creatures known as art dealers). – Jerry Saltz

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

Of course art world ethics are important. But museums are no purer than any other institution or business. Academics arent necessarily more high-minded than gallerists. – Jerry Saltz

Were all entitled to opinions about how art institutions should behave, and entitled to voicing those opinions through whatever means available to us. Were also allowed to change or modify our opinions. – Jerry Saltz