Art is a self-replicating force. Jerry Saltz More Quotes by Jerry Saltz More Quotes From Jerry Saltz 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 buildingartfirsts To me, nothing in the art world is neutral. The idea of 'disinterest' strikes me as boring, dishonest, dubious, and uninteresting. Jerry Saltz dubiousideasart Turns out Picasso's passion for uncertainty, mystery, and the thrill of life never ended. Jerry Saltz thrillmysterypassion Venice is the perfect place for a phase of art to die. No other city on earth embraces entropy quite like this magical floating mall. Jerry Saltz venicecitiesart These days, newish art can be priced between $10,000 and $25,000. When I tell artists that a new painting by a newish artist should go for around $1,200, they look at me like I'm a flesh-eating virus. Jerry Saltz flesh-eatingvirusesart Only an artist as preternaturally acute and copacetic, as oddly visionary and just odd as Richard Artschwager would be able to lay out the whole course of human evolution and have it make some kind of sense while also seeming like a dazzling insight. Jerry Saltz visionariesartistwould-be Think of an abstract painting as very, very low relief - a thing, not a picture. Jerry Saltz abstract-paintingreliefthinking 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 wallorderart The secret of food lies in memory - of thinking and then knowing what the taste of cinnamon or steak is. Jerry Saltz memorieslyingthinking The price of a work of art has nothing to do with what the work of art is, can do, or is worth on an existential, alchemical level. Jerry Saltz existentialismlevelsart When art wins, everyone wins. Jerry Saltz winningart Decades ago, Gerhard Richter found a painterly philosopher's stone. Like Jackson Pollock before him, he discovered something that had been in painting all along, always overlooked or discounted. Jerry Saltz philosopherpaintingstones Damien Hirst is the Elvis of the English art world, its ayatollah, deliverer, and big-thinking entrepreneurial potty-mouthed prophet and front man. Hirst synthesizes punk, Pop Art, Jeff Koons, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, and Catholicism. Jerry Saltz menartthinking I don't know much about auctions. I sometimes go to previews and see art sardined into ugly rooms. I've gawked at the gaudy prices, and gaped at well-clad crowds of happy white people conspicuously spending hundreds of millions of dollars. Jerry Saltz whitepeopleart Works of art often last forever, or nearly so. But exhibitions themselves, especially gallery exhibitions, are like flowers; they bloom and then they die, then exist only as memories, or pressed in magazines and books. Jerry Saltz flowermemoriesart Willem de Kooning is generally credited for coming out of the painterly gates strong in the forties, revolutionizing art and abstraction and reaching incredible heights by the early fifties, and then tailing off. Jerry Saltz heightstrongart Where Cezanne captured and intensified shards of the eternal (every pear far more sharply defined than it could be in life), Monet portrayed the changeability and flux of every moment. 'The Water Lilies' give you a jittery, amorphous sense of a world seen at the speed of light. Jerry Saltz water-lilylightgiving 'Untitled' is a time machine that can transport you to 1992, an edgy moment when the art world was crumbling, money was scarce, and artists like Tiravanija were in the nascent stages of combining Happenings, performance art, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, and the do-it-yourself ethos of punk. Meanwhile, a new art world was coming into being. Jerry Saltz ethoscrumblingart Chris Ofili's suave, stippled, visually tricked-out paintings of the nineties, with their allover fields of shimmering dots and clumps of dung, are like cave paintings of modern life. They crackle with optical cockiness, love, and massive amounts of painterly mojo. Jerry Saltz cave-paintingssuavecaves When the purse strings tighten up at museums, the institutions usually cut back and cancel shows. That's exactly the wrong reaction. In fact, now is a good time for them to loosen up - a chance to breathe and experiment a little - and go for the juicy solution lurking in their own basements. Jerry Saltz juicycuttingmuseums
