Jerry Saltz Author Archive
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Jerry Saltz

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Jerry Saltz, New York’s senior art critic, is the author of the New York Times best seller How To Be an Artist and has won two ASME awards and the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.

  1. best of 2022
    The Best New York Art Shows of 2022Gonzo quilting, Mayan sculpture, and one wild, egalitarian group show made this a great year to hit the galleries.
  2. remembrance
    Remembering Lee Bontecou and Her Volcanic Hell HolesThe visionary artist died this week at age 91.
  3. art
    A Painting for a World in CollapseWhat The Raft of the Medusa reveals about contemporary political art.
  4. art
    Wolfgang Tillmans Changed What Photos Look LikeA career retrospective becomes a cathedral of the mundane.
  5. fall preview
    10 Art Shows We Can’t Wait to See This FallWolfgang Tillmans at MoMA, Theaster Gates at the New Museum, and a bid for W.E.B. Du Bois as America’s first abstract artist.
  6. remembrance
    Jennifer Bartlett’s Great Tree of LifeThe artist wanted to make a work “that had everything in it.”
  7. remembrance
    Remembering Sam Gilliam of the Astral PlaneHis draped paintings took the form to its outer limits.
  8. art review
    Yu-Wen Wu’s Algorithmic Odyssey Around the WorldA brilliant work on the immigrant experience, courtesy of a glitch in the Matrix.
  9. art review
    A Universe in South CentralLauren Halsey’s new show is an overflowing tribute to her Los Angeles neighborhood.
  10. art review
    Matisse’s Miracle in RedA small exhibition at MoMA captures a big moment in Modernism.
  11. art review
    The Whitney Biennial Falters OnThe 2022 show has just enough high points to get you through it — including three stunning Charles Ray sculptures.
  12. robert gober
    What I Saw in Robert Gober’s MirrorGazing into his new work was like seeing the wreckage of the recent past — the pandemic, protests, a country torn apart, and my own internal disarray.
  13. art
    Wayne Thiebaud, 1920–2021His paintings of cakes, bathers, landscapes, paint cans, pastries, and cityscapes represent a luscious American sublime.
  14. best of 2021
    The Best New York Art Shows of 2021The art world has changed forever. But New York galleries still rule.
  15. we’re buying people
    It Took an Artist to Make a Great Film About Art-MakingJulian Schnabel made the three best movies about the mysteries of the creative process and a life lived in art.
  16. art review
    John Currin Is the Caligula of PaintingA new show is even more unsettling and disturbing than those that made his controversial name.
  17. art
    Jasper Johns and MeThe artist who invented contemporary art also changed my life.
  18. fall preview 2021
    10 Must-See Art Shows to Catch This FallJerry Saltz on his most anticipated New York museum shows — from Jasper Johns at the Whitney to the Bronx Museum’s Biennial.
  19. chuck close
    Chuck Close, Artist MutineerA critic considers the legacy of an intractable force in portraiture who turned himself into an artist non grata.
  20. paul cezanne
    Watching Cézanne Just … LookIt took me until my early 50s to be smote by Cezanne. Now I love him.
  21. david hammons
    ‘Anti-Art Star’ David Hammons Has Made a Monumental MarkWith his new public sculpture, the almost-invisible, enormously influential “art gangster” has made it impossible to overlook him.
  22. art review
    Frieze New York and the Return of the MegafairsSocial reentry, sensory overload, and some very good art at the first big event since … well, you know when.
  23. money
    Think of NFTs As a BrushMaybe one day, they will be an artistic tool as powerful as any other.
  24. art review
    The Detonations of Alice NeelThe artist’s portrait show at the Met is packed with raw emotional power.
  25. art
    The Frick on Madison Finally Lets You See Fragonard Up CloseEmpowered by its new setting, work once considered frivolous becomes visual thunder.
  26. art review
    Heartbreak and Resurrection in ‘Grief and Grievance’ at the New MuseumA brutal, essential show that pulls from the canon of Black contemporary art.
  27. art
    Roni Horn’s ‘I Am Paralyzed With Hope’ Is a Flag for a New AmericaThe last thing I saw on Inauguration Day was a work of art on Instagram that put a spell on me.
  28. close looks
    Posted Live From the InfernoJerry Saltz on the pictures from the Capitol—some of the scariest, stupidest ever taken.
  29. best of 2020
    The 10 Best Art Shows of 2020Jordan Casteel, Noah Davis, and anything you could see in person.
  30. the quarries
    The First (And Dear God, It Better Be the Last) QuarriesIn which we award the most original, absurd, scrappy, and ingenious works that shaped our year in quarantine.
  31. art
    4 Museums Decided This Work Shouldn’t Be Shown. They’re Both Right and Wrong.The art world is outraged at the postponement of a Philip Guston retrospective. But it may well be the right thing to do.
  32. art
    How Caravaggio Destroyed (and Saved) PaintingThree revolutionary works still speak to us of doubt, inspiration, and grace.
  33. fall preview
    Explore the World of Artists in QuarantineThe Drawing Center presents vibrant new work created in lockdown.
  34. gavin brown’s enterprise
    Gavin Brown’s Enterprise Is Closing, and the Art World Suddenly Looks DifferentBrown is a special case in a class of special-case galleries and artists that emerged in the 1990s.
  35. art
    These Two Last Suppers Are My Quarantine ObsessionComparing two masterpiece treatments made just 50 years apart: one revolutionary and prevailing, the other genius and forgotten.
  36. legacies
    Christo Made Us Feel the Awe-Inspiring Impermanence of Human AchievementSome scoff at these works as mere spectacle. They are spectacle. But that isn’t nothing.
  37. art
    This Is the Saddest Picture I Have Ever SeenSandro Botticelli’s La Derelitta, a 15th-century tableau of hopelessness, feels especially resonant right now.
  38. first person
    My AppetitesJerry Saltz on eating and coping mechanisms, childhood and self-control, criticism, love, cancer and pandemics.
  39. art world
    The Last Days of the Art World … and Perhaps the First Days of a New OneThe art that emerges in the aftermath of this crisis will look very different. The rupture will be even more dramatic for galleries and museums.
  40. art
    Revisiting a 16th-Century Masterpiece of Mass Death From Self-Isolation in 2020Lately, I have spent so much time contemplating Pieter Bruegel’s “The Triumph of Death” I feel I have almost been living inside it.
  41. art
    The Art World Goes DarkThe pandemic has already darkened galleries, museums, and artists’ studios. What new forms will emerge from that darkness?
  42. books
    Can You Tell Anyone How to Be an Artist?Artist Laurie Simmons and our art critic Jerry Saltz (they’re old friends) talk about his new book.
  43. mexican muralists
    ‘Vida Americana’ Is the Most Relevant Show of the 21st CenturyThe contributions of Mexican muralists to modern art has been criminally neglected. This Whitney show begins the correction.
  44. art
    Donald Judd’s Minimalist Legacy Is All Around UsThe artist wanted his work totally empty. Which allowed the world to make anything out of it.
  45. art
    Jerry Saltz on Robert Andy Coombs’s Taboo-Breaking PhotosIn his work, you can see crescendos of pleasure, helplessness, and fear.
  46. losses
    No One Looked at New York Like Jason PolanHis was an art of taking pleasure in and appreciating the people, places, and things of the world.
  47. this! is! a ranking!
    The Name Doodles on Jeopardy’s Greatest of All Time Tournament, RankedAt least try a doodle, Brad Rutter.
  48. legacies
    John Baldessari Was Anything But BoringHis art was mystically simple: splendid when it was good, entrancing and gleeful when it was great.
  49. the lost canon
    Beauford Delaney Very Nearly Disappeared from Art HistoryAs a black, gay painter, even when he was celebrated, it was not as an equal to his contemporaries.
  50. best of 2019
    The 10 Best Art Shows of 2019From an art-world protest to a radically original self-portraitist.
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