Jerry Saltz Author Archive
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Jerry Saltz

  1. art review
    Losing Myself in the Paintings of Facebook-Educated Matthew WongAn impressive painter’s debut show at Karma gallery.
  2. art review
    Cy Twombly and the Transporting Power of Art That Barely Uses the Tools of ArtScribbles, jots, smears, and smudges that make my knees buckle.
  3. The New Astor Place Rhino Sculpture Is a Kitschy MonstrosityIt helps proves my theory that 95 percent of public sculpture is crap.
  4. art
    This Nobel Laureate in Medicine Belongs Next to Michelangelo As a DraftsmanSantiago Ramón y Cajal is the only Nobel Prize winner in history — in physiology and medicine in 1906 — to also be a truly great artist.
  5. art
    Reuse, Reinvent, Reimagine: The Brilliance of Hans-Peter FeldmannToday, the pioneer of artistic appropriation can be regarded as Instagram before Instagram.
  6. Antiguan Master Frank Walter Is a Revelation at ADAAWalter never found the recognition he was looking for; he yearned to have his work seen and acknowledged in his lifetime.
  7. art
    These Trump Paintings, by Peter Saul, Are a Highlight of the ADAA FairIn spite of claims otherwise, Saul does not make “political art.”
  8. The New Museum’s ‘I Am More Woke Than You’ TriennialBut we must not blame artists for this curatorial belaboring.
  9. art
    The Obamas’ Official Portraits Rise to the OccasionKehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald join the canon.
  10. LaToya Ruby Frazier Is a Goya of Black AmericaIn her photographs, I see the rotten social malignancy that perpetuates entrenched racial discrimination.
  11. Imagining Donald Trump Sitting on Maurizio Cattelan’s Solid-Gold ToiletWhen I first saw Cattelan’s toilet I considered it an obvious comment on the market. Yet at the White House it would have much more charged meanings.
  12. Trump’s Border Wall Prototypes Are a Kind of National Monument to NativismWhen you look at the eight prototypes as art, what do you see?
  13. art and money
    The Met’s Admission-Fee Hike Points at a Much Bigger ProblemThe newly fortified ticket price is a drag. But what got us here is worse.
  14. Wherever the New Artforum Is Heading, I’m Along for the RideIn David Velasco, the magazine has a new editor, new energy, and new purpose. Thank God.
  15. 11,000 People Demanded the Met Remove This Painting. They Aren’t Going To. Good.In many ways it is a sign of art’s complexity that it generate a wide variety of responses.
  16. year in culture 2017
    The 10 Best Art Achievements of 2017Artists from Kara Walker to Jonathan Horowitz address the Trump era with fire and fury.
  17. tributes
    I Wish This Tribute to Oscar Wilde Could Remain in New York ForeverThis enchanted mise-en-scène is devoted to Wilde’s tragic last chapter: his trial and imprisonment for homosexuality, followed by his death in exile.
  18. Jerry Saltz: Christie’s Says This Painting Is by Leonardo. I Really Doubt It.One look at this painting tells me it’s a sham.
  19. Michelangelo Exploded Art History, Just With His DrawingThe Metropolitan Museum’s new show is a stupendous metaphysical-visual exhalation.
  20. We Can Now Divide Art History Into Before Linda Nochlin and AfterThe late critic’s 1971 essay blew through the gates of art-world patriarchy.
  21. art
    Radical in Content, Retrograde in Form: What Should We Make of ‘Trigger’?I wish I didn’t feel as conflicted as I do about this show that surveys “gender beyond the binary.”
  22. art review
    The Fearless Chris Ofili Enters His Own Personal Paradise LostThe four paintings are hung behind a cage of cyclone fencing.
  23. Three-Sentence Reviews: Peter Saul, Trevor Paglen, and 7 MoreThank God for Peter Saul.
  24. art review
    Kara Walker’s New Show Is the Best Art Made About This Country in This CenturyIt’s extraordinary to see an artist responding so well to the incredible political storm blowing all around us.
  25. 10 Thoughts About the New York Times’ Mark Grotjahn ProfileNone of this has anything to do with art.
  26. Jerry Saltz: I Give In, MoMA. You’ve Won Me Over. (Halfway, Anyway.)MoMA has been this broken spatial matrix since November 4, 2004, the day it reopened with great fanfare.
  27. Looking for New Electricity in the Mostly Static Art WorldIt’s not a matter of art being becoming more political. But the more I look for signs of artistic vitality, the more frustrated I’ve become.
  28. art fairs
    Jerry Saltz: The Drawing I Can’t Stop Thinking About From Frieze New YorkA great work of art from 1875 that’s never been seen in any museum.
  29. Right Now Is a Blockbuster Moment in New York for Female ArtistsNow let’s see if we can keep it up.
  30. How to Navigate an Art Fair With Jerry Saltz▶️ Nobody can do it like Jerry.
  31. Vito Acconci, 1940–2017He was the art world’s man in black, our mysterious you-want-it-darker Vito di Milo.
  32. Glenn O’Brien and the Avant-Garde That LostThree Sundays ago, I went to the beautiful memorial for the great writer-impresario-thinker Glenn O’Brien, and a melancholy thought took hold of me.
  33. art and design 2017
    Jerry Saltz Reviews Jerry Saltz: A Critic Looks at His Own Early ArtworkBefore I became a critic, I was an artist, and in the early 1970s, I feverishly devoted myself to illustrating the entirety of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
  34. feature
    Jerry Saltz: My Life As a Failed ArtistDecades after giving up the dream for good, an art critic returns to the work he’d devoted his life to, then abandoned — but never really forgot.
  35. remembrances
    In Remembrance of James Rosenquist: 1933 – 2017The first-rank Pop Artist has died.
  36. art
    The 2017 Whitney Biennial Is the Most Politically Charged in DecadesThe first, last, and only Hillary Clinton biennial.
  37. art
    The Most Memorable Thing I Saw at the Art Fairs: The Photographs of Aneta BartosThese haunted, staged photographs of the artist partially clad in bra and panties or camisoles with her Speedo-wearing, bald, bodybuilder father.
  38. Can Bad Art Be Made Good by Changing Political Times? The Case of Robert LongoLongo’s sculptural excess and atrociousness speaks new languages and is more acrid than ever.
  39. Andrea Rosen Has Decided to Close Up Shop. This Is a Major Loss.Rosen gave us Felix Gonzalez-Torres, John Currin, and Wolfgang Tillmans — who together invented the 1990s art world.
  40. art in our time
    What Photography Can Learn From Danny Lyon in the Age of TrumpMost people have never heard of one of the most powerful and political photographers in history, Danny Lyon.
  41. art
    The Artwork That Jerry Saltz Can’t Stop Thinking AboutGlenn Ligon’s conceptualist text piece is neither protest nor poetry.
  42. Staring at Trump’s Body, What Do You See?Artist Jonathan Horowitz takes us on a journey into the metaphysics of the president’s great, somewhat mysterious, half-beast behemoth bulk.
  43. Richard Prince Just Showed How Art Fights Trump“This is not my work. I did not make it. I deny. I denounce. This fake art.”
  44. What 2017 Needs From the Art World: A Commitment to New ArtAs a critic, I need to make a commitment to the art of this moment. I want the art world as a whole to do the same.
  45. James Rosenquist: A Correction.
  46. Eric Fischl’s New Master Portrait of AmericaLooking at it, I felt like I had fallen through a trapdoor.
  47. Considering the Ankara Assassination Photos As History PaintingWhat makes these pictures so different from all of the other pictures of death that we see?
  48. year in culture 2016
    The 10 Best Art Shows of 2016What art and which artists had inklings we were entering a paradigm shift?
  49. Andreas Gursky Predicted the Future — and PresentArtists often channel the future.
  50. This Francis Picabia Retrospective Is a Call to MutinyPicabia wakes the polis.
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