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Although I Adore The Italian High Renaissance, I'd Rather Look At Mannerism. The Former Is Ordered, Integrated, Otherworldly, And Grandiose; It Leaves You Feeling Hungry For Something Flawed And Of-the-flesh.

-Jerry Saltz

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Although I Adore The

Jerry Saltz

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Although I Adore The Italian High Renaissance, I'd Rather Look At Mannerism. The Former Is Ordered, Integrated, Otherworldly, And Grandiose; It Leaves You Feeling Hungry For Something Flawed And Of-the-flesh.

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Something Special

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Georgia O Keeffe

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I Hate When Dealers Talk To Me. I Love Dealers - They're Some Of Our Favorite People In The Art World. But I Hate If They Do A Sales Pitch On Me. I Can't Stand It.

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Jeffrey Deitch Is The Jeff Koons Of Art Dealers. Not Because He's The Biggest, Best, Or The Richest Of His Kind. But Because In Some Ways He's The Weirdest (which Is Saying A Lot When You're Talking About The Wonderful, Wicked, Lovable, And Annoying Creatures Known As Art Dealers).

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Robert Rauschenberg Was Not A Giant Of American Art; He Was The Giant. No American Created So Many Aesthetic Openings For So Many Artists.

More And More In The Art World Are Becoming Moralistic, Telling Artists And Critics What They Should And Shouldn't Write, Do, Or Make Art About. Never Mind The Intellectual Hypocrisy Of This: Those Who Violate The Clublike Code Are Made Out To Be Wrong, Immoral, Corrupt.

Galleries Needn't Be Exactly Like White Columns Purely Because Times Are Bad Again. But The Idea Of This Special Space Could - Should - Help Shape What Comes Next.

Not To Say People Shouldn't Get Rich From Art. I Adore The Alchemy Wherein Artists Who Cast A Complex Spell Make Rich People Give Them Their Money. (just Writing It Makes Me Cackle.) But Too Many Artists Have Been Making Money Without Magic.

Art Is Good, Bad, Boring, Ugly, Useful To Us Or Not. It Does Or Doesn't Disturb Optical Monotony, And Succeeds Or Fails In Surmounting Sterility Of Style Or Visual Stereotype; It Creates New Beauty Or It Doesn't.

All Art Comes From Other Art, And All Immigrants Come From Other Places.

There Are Many, Many Art Worlds. Art Contains Multitudes.

Craft Is Not A Category; It's A Means. The Folks Running The Museum [museum Of Arts And Design]are Sharp, And They Know This, But They Are In A Bind.

Art Is For Anyone. It Just Isn't For Everyone. Still, Over The Past Decade, Its Audience Has Hugely Grown, And That's Irked Those Outside The Art World, Who Get Irritated At Things Like Incomprehensibility Or Money.

Lucian Freud's Career Affirms That The Only Thing An Artist Can Do Is Remain True To Whatever Vision, (lack Of) Talent, Or Ideas That Happened To Pick Them In Order To Be Made Known To The World.

After Too Much Art That Made Too Much Sense, Artists Are Operating Blind Again. They're More Interested In The Possible Than The Probable, The Private That Speaks Publicly Rather Than The Public With No Private Side At All.

I Also Take Pleasure In The So-called Negative Power In Grotjahn's Work. That Is, I Love His Paintings For What They Are Not. Unlike Much Art Of The Past Decade, Grotjahn Isn't Simply Working From A Prescribed Checklist Of Academically Acceptable, Curator-approved 'isms' And Twists.

Almost All Institutions Own A Lot More Art Than They Can Ever Show, Much Of It Revealing For Its Timeliness, Genius, Or Sheer Weirdness.

My Job As Art Critic Is To Watch Artists Dance Naked In Public, And Then I Will, In Turn, Dance Naked Critically In Public.

A Saboteur In The House Of Art And A Comedienne In The House Of Art Theory, Lawler Has Spent Three Decades Documenting The Secret Life Of Art. Functioning As A Kind Of One-woman Csi Unit, She Has Photographed Pictures And Objects In Collectors' Homes, In Galleries, On The Walls Of Auction Houses, And Off The Walls, In Museum Storage.

The Last Time Money Left The Art World, Intrepid Types Maxed Out Their Credit Cards And Opened Galleries, And A Few Of Them Have Become The Best In The World.

The Art World Is An All-volunteer Force. No One Has To Be Here If He Or She Doesn't Want To Be, And We Should Be Associating With Anyone We Want To.

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.

I Am All For Art's Finding A Large Audience. But The Way That's Happening Now, With Big Works Filling Big Galleries And Bigger Shows, Is Mostly Stopping Statements From Being Made. Or Heard. Or Talked About. Or Really Examined. It's Watering Things Down.

When I Criticize Joseph Beuys Or Francis Bacon, Nobody Calls Those Opinions Anti-male. Putting Female Artists Or Their Subject Matter Off-limits Is Itself Sexist And Limiting.

When Museums Are Built These Days, Architects, Directors, And Trustees Seem Most Concerned About Social Space: Places To Have Parties, Eat Dinner, Wine-and-dine Donors. Sure, These Are Important These Days - Museums Have To Bring In Money - But They Gobble Up Space And Push The Art Itself Far Away From The Entrance.

I Don't Want To Hear At All What The Artist Thinks About His Art. And I'm Not Writing For The Artist. I'm Writing For The Reader, And I Want To Tell The Reader What I Think.

'summer Of Love: Art Of The Psychedelic Era,' The Whitney Museum's 40th-anniversary Trip Down Counterculture Memory Lane, Provides Moments Of Buzzy Fun, But It'll Leave You Only Comfortably Numb. For Starters, It May Be The Whitest, Straightest, Most Conservative Show Seen In A New York Museum Since Psychedelia Was New.

Art Is A Way Of Showing The Outside World What Your Inside World Is Like.

Don’t Go To A Museum With A Destination. Museums Are Wormholes To Other Worlds. There Are Ecstasy Machines. Follow Your Eyes To Wherever They Lead You, Stop, Get Very Quiet, And The World Should Begin To Change For You. And If You See Me, Say Something! We Can Talk About It Together.

The Reason The Art World Doesn't 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. They're All Cliche And Already Told.

Turns Out Picasso's Passion For Uncertainty, Mystery, And The Thrill Of Life Never Ended.

Elizabeth Peyton, The Artist Known For Tiny, Dazzling Portraits Of Radiant Youth, Is Now Painting Tiny, Dazzling Portraits Of Radiant Middle Age.

I See 30 To 40 Gallery Shows A Week, And No Matter What Kind Of Mood I'm 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.

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?

I Just Want To Say One Thing About The '70s. Enough With This Purer, "it Was A Better Time," Business. Every Time Is About As Polluted And Needy And Beautiful As Most Other Times. I Was Around In The '70s, And People Were Just As Ambitious And Envious And Filled With Need And Desire As They Are Today.

Although I Adore The Italian High Renaissance, I'd Rather Look At Mannerism. The Former Is Ordered, Integrated, Otherworldly, And Grandiose; It Leaves You Feeling Hungry For Something Flawed And Of-the-flesh.

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.

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.

There's Something Pleasing About Large, Well-lit Spaces. I Love That Dealers Are Willing To Take Massive Chances In Order To Give This Much Room To Their Artists. Most Of All, I Love That More Galleries Showing More Art Gives More Artists A Shot.

As I Made My Way Through 'on Line,' The Austere, Stridently Dogmatic, Sometimes Revelatory Exhibition 'about Line' At Moma, I Found Myself Thinking, 'someone Please Wake Me When The Seventies Are Over!' In The Empire Of Curators, The Sun Never Sets On The Seventies. It Is The Undead Decade.

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.

Much Good Art Got Made While Money Ruled; I Like A Lot Of It, And Hardship And Poverty Aren't Virtues. The Good News Is That, Since Almost No One Will Be Selling Art, Artists - Especially Emerging Ones - Won't Have To Think About Turning Out A Consistent Style Or Creating A Brand. They'll Be Able To Experiment As Much As They Want.

The Debut Show, “second Lives: Remixing The Ordinary,” Is Supposed To Be About How Artists Reuse Humble Or Unusual Materials. There’s Good Work Here, But Much Of What’s On View Is Actually More About Obsession And Repetition: A Couch Made Out Of 3,500 Quarters, A Necklace Composed Of 100 Handgun Triggers. The Building, Too, Seems Caught Between Wanting To Be An Object Of Decorative Delectation And Making An Architectural Statement.

After 1909, Monet Drastically Enlarged His Brushstrokes, Disintegrated His Images, And Broke Through The Taming Constraints And Delicacy Of Impressionism For Good. Nineteen Gnarly Paintings, Starting In 1909 And Carrying Through His Final Seventeen Years, Finish Off The Notion That Monet Went Happily Ever After Into Lily-land.

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.

I'm Noticing A New Approach To Art Making In Recent Museum And Gallery Shows. It Flickered Into Focus At The New Museum's 'younger Than Jesus' Last Year And Ran Through The Whitney Biennial, And I'm Seeing It Blossom And Bear Fruit At 'greater New York,' Moma P.s. 1's Twice-a-decade Extravaganza Of Emerging Local Talent.

Megacollectors Suppose They Can Enter Art History By Spending Astronomical Amounts.

Many Things Happened In The Sixties, But The Period Is No More Significant, Better, Or More 'political' Than Today. It's Time To Turn The Page.

I Love Art Dealers. In Some Ways, They're 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.

The Reason I Love Blogs So Much Right Now Is That I Am Seeing More Critical Voices Appear, And That's Kind Of Thrilling. I Think A Lot Of Critics In Their Forties Or Even Their Thirties Have Had Their Voice Scared Or Trained Out Of Them By The Academy. I Have Nothing Against The Academy. I Think It's Brilliant And Fantastic, But I Also Think That It's Become Almost Monolithic. The Same Way A Lot Of Art Looks The Same, A Lot Of Writing Can Sound The Same And Quotes The Same Theorists.

After Its Hothouse Incubation In The Seventies, Appropriation Breathed Important New Life Into Art. This Life Flowered Spectacularly Over The Decades - Even If It's Now Close To Aesthetic Kudzu.

'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.

It's Art That Pushes Against Psychological And Social Expectations, That Tries To Transform Decay Into Something Generative, That Is Replicative In A Baroque Way, That Isn't About Progress, And Wants To - As Walt Whitman Put It - 'contain Multitudes.'

Once Artists Are Expected To Shock, It's That Much Harder For Them To Do So.

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.

Think Of An Abstract Painting As Very, Very Low Relief - A Thing, Not A Picture.

Abstract Painting

Appropriation Is The Idea That Ate The Art World. Go To Any Chelsea Gallery Or International Biennial And You'll Find It. It's There In Paintings Of Photographs, Photographs Of Advertising, Sculpture With Ready-made Objects, Videos Using Already-existing Film.

I Rage Against Vincent Van Gogh For Needing To Die At 37, After Painting For Only Ten Years.

I Like That The Art World Isn't Regulated.

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