Another Way Please

Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Grace Hartigan in 1957. (Photo: Burt Glinn/Magnum) Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel is more than a well deserved highlighting of the lives and careers of these five iconic […]

Stripped, or Fully Loaded

Artist Tim Rice in his North Berkeley studio In Christopher Bollen‘s recent joint interview with Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith—the leading power couple in the world of art critics—the topic of studio visits came up. Neither Smith nor Saltz do them, and they listed a number of reasons why. Here is Saltz’s response: I think […]

The Guyton Files

Jerry Saltz‘s Facebook page is a world unto itself. With as many “friends” as the Facebook Police will allow, Jerry regularly posts provocative questions that spark conversations that can go on for days, garnering responses from hundreds of artists of every age and stripe. What began as an experiment quickly took on a life of […]

Art for Anyone

There are a few voices in my world who consistently ring true, like that neighbor who puts things back into perspective after a robbery down the street has everyone unduly fixated on urban crime. Jerry Saltz is one of those guys in the art world, and I repeatedly find his “set it right” point of […]

Blank is Blank

Jerry Saltz in front of a piece by Takashi Murakami The last few months have been a period of burrowing down deep for me, of incubation and isolation. But now my show is up in Provincetown and a new body of work has emerged, I am back up on the surface again and getting re-acclimatized. […]

The Long View

In his most recent piece for New York magazine, Jerry Saltz comments on the American Museum of Folk Art and its ongoing challenges. (As Jerry points out, the art is interesting but the space is a nightmare for viewing.) But this line was a particular keeper: I love the museum because it’s committed to showing […]

Cynicism’s Antidote

International man of mystery, artist Banksy I am still carrying around a big chunk of Canada’s uncivilized wildness in me, and it just doesn’t sit well with culturally-induced cynicism. And art world cynicism is cynicism of a particular stripe, leaving one to search for a few gentle but targeted exorcisms to remove that nasty taste […]

Art Making Meme of the Day

“Work of Art” judges (Photo: Bravo/Barbara Nitke) I finally saw the first episode of “Work of Art”, referenced in the post below and being discussed, dissected and deconstructed on Jerry Saltz’s Facebook page as well as countless art blogs. Having just returned from a conference on how social and mobile media can be employed for […]

Fascination or Feeling: Pick One

“Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” contestants, judges, host and mentor. (Photo: Bravo) Sebastian Smee, a most thoughtful and open-minded art critic who writes for the Boston Globe, has written a review of the oft-discussed, highly charged topic of Bravo’s new reality art series, “Work of Art.” For many of us, making art couldn’t […]