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There's One Baldessari Work I Genuinely Love And Would Like To Own, Maybe Because Of My Midwestern Roots And Love Of Driving Alone. 'the Backs Of All The Trucks Passed While Driving From Los Angeles To Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January 1963' Consists Of A Grid Of 32 Small Color Photographs Depicting Just What The Title Says.

-Jerry Saltz

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There's One Baldessari Work

Jerry Saltz

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There's One Baldessari Work I Genuinely Love And Would Like To Own, Maybe Because Of My Midwestern Roots And Love Of Driving Alone. 'the Backs Of All The Trucks Passed While Driving From Los Angeles To Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January 1963' Consists Of A Grid Of 32 Small Color Photographs Depicting Just What The Title Says.

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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.

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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 You'll Find A Would-be Willem De Kooning).

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There's A Lot Of Hate Mail From Readers. There's Hate Mail, Threats, Stalkers... I Think That I'm Bulletproof Every Week When I've Turned Something In. I Think, I'm A God.

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Now People Look At 'the Scream' Or Van Gogh's 'irises' Or A Picasso And See Its New Content: Money. Auction Houses Inherently Equate Capital With Value.

Anyone Who Relishes Art Should Love The Extraordinary Diversity And Psychic Magic Of Our Art Galleries. There's 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 Amsterdam's Or Hamburg's Galleries.

I Wish I Could Write About Shows Outside New York. I Often Feel Like The Last Person To Know Anything, Because I Almost Never Get To Leave Town, And When I Do, I Tend To Go For Three Days Max. Seeing Between 30 And 40 Shows A Week In 100 Or So Galleries And Museums Takes Up Nearly All My Time.

New Yorkers Only Cross Water For Visual Culture If The Water Is An Ocean. The East River Throws Us For A Huge Loop. If We Started Going To Queens And The Bronx For Visual Culture, Many Of Our Rent, Space, And Crowding Problems Would Be Over Indefinitely.

It Is Not Possible To Overstate The Influence Of Paul Cezanne On Twentieth-century Art. He's The Modern Giotto, Someone Who Shattered One Kind Of Picture-making And Invented A New One That The World Followed.

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.

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Outside Museums, In Noisy Public Squares, People Look At People. Inside Museums, We Leave That Realm And Enter What Might Be Called The Group-mind, Getting Quiet To Look At Art.

The Style Of Ancient Egyptian Art Is Transcendently Clear, Something 8-year-olds Can Recognize In An Instant. Its Consistency And Codification Is One Of The Most Epic Visual Journeys In All Art, One That Lasts 30 Dynasties Spread Over 3,000 Years.

The Alchemy Of Good Curating Amounts To This: Sometimes, Placing One Work Of Art Near Another Makes One Plus One Equal Three. Two Artworks Arranged Alchemically Leave Each Intact, Transform Both, And Create A Third Thing.

Being Critical Of Art Is A Way Of Showing Art Respect.

Everyone Goes To The Same Exhibitions And The Same Parties, Stays In The Same Handful Of Hotels, Eats At The Same No-star Restaurants, And Has Almost The Same Opinions. I Adore The Art World, But This Is Copycat Behavior In A Sphere That Prides Itself On Independent Thinking.

While The Space For Artists And Curators Has Increased Enormously, Maybe, Just Maybe, That's Left Room For Too Many People Calling Themselves Artists And Curators Who Are Simply Not Up To The Term.

Every Movement That Slays Its Gods Creates New Ones, Of Course. I Loathe Talk Of The Sixties And Seventies Being A 'greatest Generation' Of Artists, But If We're Going To Use Such Idiotic Appellations, Let This One Also Be Applied To The Artists, Curators, And Gallerists Who Emerged In The First Half Of The Nineties.

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

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.

Photography Is The Easiest Thing To Make, And One Of The Hardest Things To Make Well.

Auction Houses Run A Rigged Game. They Know Exactly How Many People Will Be Bidding On A Work And Exactly Who They Are. In A Gallery, Works Of Art Need Only One Person Who Wants To Pay For Them.

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.

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.

I Have A Soft Spot For Art That, In Terms Of Subject Matter And Material, Is In Bad Taste.

Pictures Artists Staged Their Own Images Or Copied Or Cut Out Others Already In Existence. The Viewer Took Them In Separately, In Sometimes Paradoxical Waves: An Original Image, Then The Manipulations Of It, Then The Places Where Image And Idea Intersected. This Created A Crucial Perceptual Glitch That Irony And Understanding Filled.

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

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.

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

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

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.'

It's Great That New York Has Large Spaces For Art. But The Enormous Immaculate Box Has Become A Dated, Even Oppressive Place. Many Of These Spaces Were Designed For Sprawling Installations, Large Paintings, And The Relational Aesthetics Work Of The Past Fifteen Years.

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

Abstract Painting

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.

Few Contemporary Artists Mined The Space Between The Ordinary And The Strange Better Than Orozco Did.

Kinkade's Paintings Are Worthless Schmaltz, And The Lamestream Media That Love Him Are Wrong. However, I'd Love To See A Museum Mount A Small Show Of Kinkade's Work. I Would Like The Art World And The Wider World To Argue About Him In Public, Out In The Open.

I Don't Plan Out My Visits Rigorously, But I Do Have A List Of About 125 New York Galleries, Alternative Spaces, Museums, And So Forth That I Visit Regularly. That's The Closest Thing I Have To A Strategy: I Go To A Lot Of Places, Many That Artists Don't Visit.

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

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.

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.

My Nominee For Best Picture Of The Year - Maybe The Best Picture Ever, Because It's Essentially Made Up Of And Is An Ecstatic Love Letter To All Other Movies - Is Christian Marclay's Endlessly Enticing Must-see Masterpiece 'the Clock.'

I Think That Cynicism Is The Enemy. Cynicism Thinks It Knows How Things Work. "oh Yeah, You Know How That Works." I Think Uncertainty Is The Thing You Have To Keep Embracing. You Have To Keep Saying, I Actually Don't Know, And Going Out Is Going To Tell Me Something Every Time.

Many Museums Are Drawing Audiences With Art That Is Ostensibly More Entertaining Than Stuff That Just Sits And Invites Contemplation. Interactivity, Gizmos, Eating, Hanging Out, Things That Make Noise - All Are Now The Norm, Often Edging Out Much Else.

Living And Working For Four Decades In A Bologna Apartment And Studio He Shared With His Unwed Sisters, Morandi Painted Little But Bottles, Boxes, Jars, And Vases. Yet Like That Of Chardin And The Underappreciated William Nicholson, Morandi's Work Seems To Slow Down Time And Show You Things You've Never Seen Before.

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.

Urs Fischer Specializes In Making Jaws Drop. Cutting Giant Holes In Gallery Walls, Digging A Crater In Gavin Brown's Gallery Floor In 2007, Creating Amazing Hyperrealist Wallpaper For A Group Show At Tony Shafrazi: It All Percolates With Uncanny Destructiveness, Operatic Uncontrollability, And Barbaric Sculptural Power.

All Great Contemporary Artists, Schooled Or Not, Are Essentially Self-taught And Are De-skilling Like Crazy.

I Have Never Really Cooked, Don't Know How To Use My Dishwasher, And Subsist Mainly On Prepared Deli Takeout. I Don't Even Eat In Restaurants Much.

My Culture-deprived, Aspirational Mother Dragged Me Once A Month From Our Northern Suburb - Where The Word Art Never Came Up - To The Art Institute Of Chicago. I Hated It.

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.

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.

There's One Baldessari Work I Genuinely Love And Would Like To Own, Maybe Because Of My Midwestern Roots And Love Of Driving Alone. 'the Backs Of All The Trucks Passed While Driving From Los Angeles To Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January 1963' Consists Of A Grid Of 32 Small Color Photographs Depicting Just What The Title Says.

Early-twentieth-century Abstraction Is Art's Version Of Einstein's Theory Of Relativity. It's The Idea That Changed Everything Everywhere: Quickly, Decisively, For Good.

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.

All Great Contemporary Artists, Schooled Or Not, Are Essentially Self-taught And Are De-skilling Like Crazy. I Don't Look For Skill In Art... Skill Has Nothing To Do With Technical Proficiency... I'm Interested In People Who Rethink Skill, Who Redefine Or Reimagine It: An Engineer, Say, Who Builds Rockets From Rocks.

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.

When Art Wins, Everyone Wins.

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.

Nearly A Half-century On From Feminism, Simply Being A Woman Artist Is Still A Revolutionary Act. And Getting One's Work Shown Continues To Be Met By Enormous Inbuilt Resistance.

Energy And Art Go Where They Will.

The Place Has Had A Super-conflicted Relationship To Its Mission. In 1956, It Opened As The Museum Of Contemporary Crafts. Then In 1986 It Had A Midlife Crisis And Changed Its Name To The American Craft Museum. Then In 2002 The Name Changed Again, This Time To The Museum Of Arts And Design. Maybe In 2025 The Place Will Be Called The Designatorium. The Big Problem With A Museum Of Craft And Design Is That All Art Has Craft And Design.

Sometimes Good Art Jumps Out At Me; Most Of The Time I See Bad Art, Or See Nothing At All And Just Drift, Feeling Weird, Pretending To Be Fine.

The Secret Of Food Lies In Memory - Of Thinking And Then Knowing What The Taste Of Cinnamon Or Steak Is.

A Great Artist Has A Unique Vision...obsession. They Are Someone Willing To Fail Flamboyantly.

I Love Rauschenberg. I Love That He Created A Turning Point In Visual History, That He Redefined The Idea Of Beauty, That He Combined Painting, Sculpture, Photography, And Everyday Life With Such Gall, And That He Was Interested In, As He Put It, 'the Ability To Conceive Failure As Progress.'

'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.

Of All The Biennials, Triennials, Quadrennials, Internationals, And Massive Group Shows, Documenta, Established In 1955 And Held Once Every Five Years In Kassel, Germany, Is Seen As The Most Serious. A Statement Show.

Just As Pollock Used The Drip To Meld Process And Product, Richter 'found' And Used The Smudge And The Blur To Ravish The Eye, Creating Works Of Psychic And Physical Power.

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.

I Often Find Myself Privately Stewing About Much British Art, Thinking That Except For Their Tremendous Gardens, That The English Are Not Primarily Visual Artists, And Are, In Nearly Unsurpassable Ways, Literary.

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.

The Forties, Seventies, And The Nineties, When Money Was Scarce, Were Great Periods, When The Art World Retracted But It Was Also Reborn.

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