Jerry Saltz on the Contemporary Art World: The Good, The Bad and The Very Bad

Jerry Saltz was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In 2015, he won the National Magazine Award for Criticism. He has lectured widely, including at Harvard University, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has taught at Columbia University, Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, among many others.

[@LukeTheArtist96]

He says that art always needs to be new, always needs to challenging something, always needs to be asking questions. But at the same time "If you don't like the art world you can leave." Really indicative of the contemporary art world's obsession with rebelling against the establishment despite BEING the establishment.

[@TonySwaby]

Love this. What a great presentation.

[@tunaroll3957]

Such a nice, funny, lightweight talk on the contemporary art world, love Jerry!

[@williamstevens506]

My new favorite person, Totally brilliant. Wonderful intellect and passion for art. Love this guy.

[@toni10034]

Love you Jerry. You made me going from "let's see what this man has to say " to "I would really enjoy to listen to Jerry for hours and days and years".

[@swissyogaschool]

Wow such an incredible talk and person!! I finished the Norwegian art academy and I never heard of him:( and we were encouraged to do all the things Jerry says not to do in painting. Incredible. I always felt like he is saying now. Happy to finally see that I was not crazy then. Especially brilliant moment about the labels. Thank you 🙏

[@LearnerChess]

When he said he didn't like or understand Talking Heads, I felt I knew all I needed to about him. Brian Eno and David Byrne made the definitive album that one could say musically captures the essence of contemporary art, _My Life in the Bush of Ghosts_ . Anyone who hasn't heard it should, especially those who enjoy contemporary art.

[@beautyandcalm3600]

He said many things you love you didn’t understand the first time. Not that he doesn’t understand it now

[@IzzyCubito]

Love you Jerry, even that I do not know you and first time I've listened to you! thanks..

[@lastdays9163]

This is the first time I've seen Jerry come to life in this way. I would have paid to see him for 3 hours.

[@3greenpea]

The best thing about art critics is how they struggle to define how something is good or bad based on nothing. Hey Jerry, I remember that terrible TV show.

[@Sides3Sides]

I like it. Just rewatched both seasons. A matter of perspective, maybe.

[@really2345]

He really likes to hear himself talk. Irritating.

[@benbenabigan351]

WHAT IS ART...WHY WE ARE DOING ART.......I DO LOVE THE SUBJECT THAT MAKES ME MORE TO LEARN ABOUT ART.......Many thanks.

[@paulinawaas9204]

Love it! I could listen to your thoughts 3hrs!

[@TsetsiStoyanova]

He keeps going on and on..

[@seethevolcane]

Very oy veh

[@jaylucas8352]

Almost like he’s there to present a talk, it’s mind boggling

[@paulinawaas9204]

Brilliant!

[@karenmoody1879]

Musical reference wrong. Not the Sex Pistols. The Velvet Underground. Their album only sold x number of copies, but all those people started bands.

[@liman524]

Great talk! Thank you!

[@awilsonarchive]

Yeah people lean on the subject matter... Look forward to reading the Wilde essays. Doing 'what is helpless and unavoidable' a lovely way of characterizing what is so much oneself. Here's to healing pain and casting spells... whatever spells they may be.

[@markbarrera6807]

I'm a truck driver doing self taught art when I can. Thanks for the tips. following.

[@anonymousfellowindian]

More than art, he personally has become a star.

[@jasencordiero5366]

Awesome!!

[@gavinyates9189]

More or less, less is more, should I just do it or should I just say no, knowing when to say when time and time again. What do you think. Do you think?

[@suzannedesylva3805]

Stunning & brilliant

[@c.p.4660]

Love this.

[@rensagalirte]

Super cool talk... hola from Costa Rica

[@paulinawaas9204]

The subject matter and context matters!

[@bradleygamble1912]

Which artist sculpted that ladies new face?

[@door2yourheart]

Haha! Nice one!

[@tinatinchen7]

Finally a real contemporary! ((-, Having a blast with someone who speaks truth. Thanks for that!

[@alsaulso1332]

My Boi Jerry!!!

[@abiegreyvenstein5427]

So,.....art is good if Jerry says so. A gathering where non artist tell each other they are artists.

[@MelchorMoore]

Well… Abie… that’s what an art critic is. It’s been that way since we left palaces as craftsman and entered salons for public viewing. Since I can’t find your art anywhere online I assume you are a critic of critics with this as your platform?

[@Hidrogjen]

Cry about it. Or work harder

[@jaylucas8352]

Do you need a tissue ?

[@sebastianmelmoth685]

I left the art world 10 years ago. It's been bliss.

[@hjcvskggiuuhbhjdrt]

16:54 Jerry does an Epic Record Scratch sound effect with only his mouth!

[@michaelsoza4183]

Art critics are not visual artists. So they are not the best in assessing art works. Often they are the worst of all, for judging art.

[@morralo]

thnx

[@DJSTOEK]

🖤

[@carolmartin8781]

Jerry Saltz said art is not something you can understand; yet he is struggling to understand att. I hear frustration and even anger in his voice.

[@sebastianmelmoth685]

Would have ben nice had he gone into the technical aspects of art appreciation.

[@zacharybottoms3968]

yeahhh totally i feel like your really missing the point if his thesis at the start was to "turn rocks into rockets". your the person trying to solve a theoretical math problem instead of reinventing the fucking model.

[@emkiandthesundolls757]

@@zacharybottoms3968 exactly.

[@thomervin7450]

So original, so visionary. Two thumbs up.

[@wreckermatesavage5111]

very good bgm

[@bilalhussein9730]

The Chinese used flattened perspective in their landscapes and isometric perspective in their interiors. It's a really dubious argument to say that linear perspective 'had to go' though. Complete bollocks actually.

[@michellegraven7786]

“don’t talk, I can’t hear myself see”…. , turns down the car radio to see where I’m driving 😂💦

[@cliffdariff74]

never got into Jasper Johns

[@_edijane_]

Fuck I love this guy

[@lluhu]

I can't stand that all the talk is like a big show as if I am a kid or a person with problems of attention.

[@renzo6490]

"If you don't like the art world, you can leave" What is the art world??? What does 'leave' mean here? Does this comment apply to art critics? I feel sorry for the audience stuck there, captive.

[@jaylucas8352]

And yet here you are watching him lmaoo

[@renzo6490]

@@jaylucas8352 No…I stopped watching.

[@SKIPPERBIRDWOOD]

He's prodding his audience to come up with his version of Bacon's Pope painting, to pin down and convince them of his interpretation. Then, almost without taking a breath he goes into Wallace Steven's rehash of Heraclitus stepping into the river, only using the bridge instead as a metaphor. That deals with the truth about the primacy of INDIVIDUAL perception . So that sounded a lot like a contradiction. He has some great ideas but I wish he'd put as much attention into consistency as he does into performance. That's some ego up there on stage. 7/10

[@jaylucas8352]

It’s almost like being a public critic requires a personal opinion, come what may... who’d have thunk it

[@TMPreRaff]

I assume he didn't get the Pulitzer Prize for his standup routine.

[@loriwakefield1]

I think you need to look at the artist Lori Wakefield

[@petermonicid6053]

It 's enough to see you making the clown , to understand that you are not serious about art. Specialy nowdays when art sales are a matter of mafia , that is very serious problem .

[@lluhu]

I cannot agree more with this comment. He is unbearable to listen. It is extremely disturbing to listen to someone who is screaming three times when pronouncing a word...

[@D0sch1]

The first speaker on the subject of art that i found not to be boring and full of himself. Thank you very much!

[@SKIPPERBIRDWOOD]

I'm sorry but he's totally full of himself

[@jaylucas8352]

Same, the ivory tower types are quite nauseating.

[@jaylucas8352]

@@SKIPPERBIRDWOOD sounds like you haven’t heard a lot of the Yale critics talk then. He’s way less pretentious

[@jackaction23]

"its a little shiny"... that might be blamed on conservators overglazing .... but yes, a little brown

[@olgahein4384]

I think he's rather hinting to Rembrandt being most famous as a master of the Chiaroscuro technique.

[@Johnconno]

Ms Rosen is on her 68th 'adjustment' and 7th husband.

[@duncanweller1]

Saltz isn't making a point about art as much as he is self-promoting. This is embarrassing. He completely dances around what art does for people. Probably because he doesn't actually know. He only suggests that he knows. And he's a shill for the contemporary art world - and not the best part of it. Can he name the four primary functions of art and any of their sub-functions? - like creating feelings of plenty or a sense of awe (my favourite) and why and how art does this and for what reasons? No. He can't. How about other dozens of functions of art? How about a description of how the perennial functions of art differ from contemporary functions of art? One of the primary functions of contemporary art is to allow people with no talent to declare themselves artists. This is greatly beneficial if you believe in total egalitarianism and not in talent. How does contemporary art act as a litmus test to divide classes (from rich and poor, from educated and not)? How does contemporary art work as propaganda for the wealthy and the powerful? To ensure that artists don't criticize those in power? (Think of China and the red line.) Why did the CIA find so much success using modern art as a political weapon against the Soviets? Understand the functions and you understand better the history of art. And you'll really see how powerful art is and how important it is to society. And you'll see how silly Mr. Saltz is when he talks about art.

[@jaylucas8352]

TLDR

[@duncanweller1]

@@jaylucas8352 You're missing out.

[@lloydrobert6182]

That quotation in the beginning was absolute BS.

[@cliffdariff74]

???

[@iropagis770]

Yeah. I listened twice and i have no idea what it means and in what context.

[@lloydrobert6182]

@@iropagis770 Sh*t, you made me hear it again! LOL

[@abacus749]

At 36.00mins,you ask, 'What is Art 'for' ?' The answer in one word is 'nothing'.

[@sebastianwalls7001]

Cocaine's a hell of a drug..

[@nononouh]

10 25

[@damonshuck7487]

I really dig his rhetoric, and enjoy listening to him speak, but I think it would do a great service for him to dumb down the way he talks, just a bit. Trying to figure out modern art is hard. He lost me a couple times during that presentation just by using some pretty out-there terminology. But I guess that's also what I love about him.

[@gogo-word]

I'm curious...what part needs to be dumbed down ?

[@thomervin7450]

@@gogo-word Yeah, you can't really get any dumber.

[@jaylucas8352]

Um, he already dumbs it down pretty far, that’s why he’s popular

[@satoshibitcoinsaki6532]

He talked about BLM.He said that we need a social evolution in this country. I hope that they show up at his place !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@joer1402]

this is precisely the kind of pretentious crap that artists hate...

[@frances3254]

ditto

[@jaylucas8352]

Not really, its just culture talk. What is paint without history or culture, just kitsch or crap really

[@joer1402]

@@jaylucas8352 Considering that I wrote this comment 3 years go, no clue why I would have said that, but I'll take your word for it.

[@edkaempf906]

I'd recommend daily brushing with toothpaste and a tooth brush. Other than that, a regular guy with lots of experience.

[@pkpapers]

Wow. She's a sculptor.Her FACE!

[@albertochirinos80]

....he's just a comedian...

[@lluhu]

Exactly, a bad one...

[@nikolozka1]

This presentation was a good topic, but presented exactly like Contemporary art style. This guy is annoying to say at least

[@GnosisMan50]

I'm 9 min into this and he does not convince me as to what art is all about.

[@jaylucas8352]

Not his job though is it

[@carolmartin8781]

I can't handle too much ego

[@frances3254]

I listen and say to myself 'oh he sounds important'...I better pay attention....Such an old tape for me...authorities know best...same with 'famous' painters. Recently am giving away 'authority' books and 'how-to' articles' as I try to simply (never easy) approach a canvas and make the marks that are 'me'. big challenge...not much of me and lots of 'them'. ok there's my 'sharing'...sigh....I'm 83 'if not now,when' ps my 'mature' brain' understands nothing this man says.

[@dukerbower2228]

All over the place, but not in a good way, I found. Honestly, what did that rambling have to do with the title of the video, much less anything? An art world word salad with so much abstraction, holes and dodging, I don't know what the fuck he was actually, really saying!? "You're a soldier, do what you can't avoid, who understands that stuff but it makes you cry, chipping away at something to make a pointy thing, the artist has to be able to embed thought into material, those clouds are not in Ferguson Missouri, etc." What were the "deep thoughts" Jack Handy?

[@seethevolcane]

Yah, it becomes BABBLE

[@cliffdariff74]

good talk, glad he's not got an art degree.

[@cabbagemontage6999]

Sounds like the presenter took a lesson or to on how to present stuff from George Carlin, which is certainly good for keeping attention up. There's one thing that bothers me about art galleries... Where's the digital art? Why is the art gallery still just blank white boring room, when we have VR, when we know how to make rooms into entire sets... How you can actually turn the museum itself into an art work... We live in an age where stationary art isn't grabbing much attention anymore... the design world can tell you rather well where eyes tend to move... And they are fixed on screens, commercials, movies, games and elsewhere. I think museums needs an upgrade... They don't really portray the magnitude of modern art... Contemporary art is ignoring digital and technological art rather bluntly. The spirit of this age, is the spirit of technology, of advancement... Sadly though, also of hyper consumerism, and this odd phenomena where the general society isn't keeping up with just how quickly our abilities grow... Everything is accessible, yet, no one really knows in which direction to go... People are becoming aware to the highest degree of each other, yet, they lose sight quickly over what needs to be protected or condoned... People question authority, yet, they also take these questions to a point of endangering themselves, because they can't trust anything at all anymore, even though there's enough research to counter their worries, but, they'd rather learn the hard way, rather than to use the gathered data... Mostly due to their distrust of it. Everything is close, everything is massive... We grow at an insane rate, and no one knows their place anymore... A modern museum is like a modern school... Still stuck somewhere in time, still lack the proper augmentation to bring it to where it's suppose to be. You don't need people to bring blank papers and try and deliver some meaning through the paper next to it describing the concept... You can express everything very vividly in the digital world... Even without the digital world, you can have machines with real animations, moving parts... Our world isn't stationary anymore, and the attention span is getting thinner and thinner... And as this video clearly shows, the young generation speaks faster and faster... Because everyone are hyper this day and age, the world barely keeps up with itself. All art speaks of it's age... In criticism, in reverence or in a personal story through it, or perhaps, in reflection of either the past of the future. Indeed, the importance of art is crucial for our advancement, for our understanding of each other... Let alone, of simple navigation. The design world on it's own is practical art... And it's everywhere. The contemporary art likes to make people question things... To rebel against something, and to attempt to show as much criticism as possible towards things... Dismember rules, establishments, concepts... Even the "show don't tell" part goes to oblivion, just for the sake of trying to convey an expression. I think that this expression ends up not really representing the full scope of our age... It only brings one side of it, and that side, in all honesty, starts to get boring... When you break everything, you end up with broken pieces that even though each fraction is completely unique, they all display a shattered image equally. And it repeats itself... Too much.

[@jennyhughes4474]

Yair Barnatan: You wrote: 'Our world isn't stationary anymore, and the attention span is getting thinner and thinner... And as this video clearly shows, the young generation speaks faster and faster... ' personally I think this is part of the reason why people are so stressed now: the world is going & changing too fast and we can't adapt to it so we become ill. I think we need quiet slow things and places where our imaginations are free to roam - but I'm old (over 60) and I hear and see way too much moving & loud stuff everywhere already, I love the sea and sound of the waves and I like a really good static piece of art - but I also enjoyed Tinguely's drawing machine when I played with it in Zurich. I think some paintings look like digital images (thinking especially of Jonas Wood) and they're great, nobody would know (me too) whether a 'painting' is actually a digital print with layers of varnish over it to create texture. We all like and need different things but I do think that there is still a place for 'old-style' static non-digital art - but I'm an old fogey!

[@cabbagemontage6999]

@@jennyhughes4474 Good points, and indeed, the world moves at ridicules speed. There's always room for the old ways, that's why people all around the world preserve them for all to see, the good old stationary art stays exactly where it is. Still, we do need to mark our age along the way, and give the future , and the present, a sense of what was "current"... And no, the whole art movement that sees literal trash as art is not what I want this generation to be remembered for. Still, you can have slow paced digital art as well ... Where you grab a certain experience, and appreciate it the more you linger. The thing is, we have more ways to express ourselves, and it's shame it isn't used as often. But yeah, the old experience must be kept, it's also a glimpse into the "current" of other times, it'd be a shame if such works were forgotten.

[@jennyhughes4474]

@@cabbagemontage6999 yes, we need all sorts of artistic expression from as many different people as possible and from everywhere = lots of art of all kinds everywhere (because nothing will please everyone) makes a better world.

[@_edijane_]

Yair Barnatan I’ve actually seen quite a lot of exciting uses of digital technologies & mechanisms, & transformations of space to create art in recent years, however these aren’t as easy to sell as paintings or photographs that can be hung on a wall.

[@jaylucas8352]

Digital art lacks the substrate of matter, the touch, the dimension. We’re bombarded by digital images daily, I’m glad art isn’t so digital particularly the massive NFT fail of the market 95% down what a fraud market

[@robsmith588]

Jerry likes to portray himself at every opportunity as a anti establishment figure. A former truck driver with no education, but a champion of Artists. After following him on Instagram I found him to be quite different than he appears. I thought his comment section was a place to discuss Art, and theories about Art. However if you engage with him to discuss Art he lashes out at you in what can only be described as a petty vindictive tirade. Out of the blue unprovoked He said I will go to my grave never having made a real work of Art. Yes this is the real Jerry Saltz don't be fooled by his phony persona.

[@jaylucas8352]

Yes I’m sure that the one side of the story is the truth lol. I’ve not found him to be like that , I’d like to hear his take on it.

[@JOSEPHCHARLESCOLIN2024]

Jerry Saltz I'm Trying to Call you before my New York Show ( Edit to show this is real )

[@BielichDai]

hit him up on twitter he for sure sees everything on there

[@JOSEPHCHARLESCOLIN2024]

@@BielichDai thanks

[@medianexchanges]

i can hear the phone ring in the past

[@JOSEPHCHARLESCOLIN2024]

@@medianexchanges um...might be right?

[@seethevolcane]

Amusing babble, up to a point....then: borink!

[@MegaZidzid]

Contemporary presenter with contemporary audience where nobody understands anything.

[@bruceofpittsburgh8987]

woke is broke art

[@amaliamytilineou6615]

what is he talking about.... sounds like a bunch of rambling to me. never actually answers anything

[@lluhu]

I cannot agree more with this comment. He is unbearable to listen. It is extremely disturbing to listen to someone who is screaming three times when pronouncing a word...

[@stevenhanson6057]

Answers? You want answers? When you are full of yourself, there is no room for anything or anybody.

[@michaelsoza4183]

Great artists were always skilled by nature. He talks non sense.

[@archanasonti7071]

Ha ha ha...

[@charlestaylor6279]

This guy's just wasting our time. Move on nothing to see, or learn here. Bye !

[@davidwilliams7935]

Terrible. Poor delivery of rambling thoughts.

[@misakarancevic8901]

So called Contemporary Art is a sect, a cult. This character is doing exactly the same as cult officer recruiting new believers into the 3 inner circles. Almost step by step. How people can't realise that. The only difference is there is not one cult leader but many. And the entire sect doesn't count more then 4-5 000 souls around the globe, promoters,"artists" and buyers included. And most of them, according to their position in the power&wealth pyramid are as rich. Filthy rich. And like all cults it's all about money. Don't be naive to think it's about "art, talent and self expression". To join the high(est) rank you have to pay baby. In money or service or whatever. Once you are in you can never get out. Poor Polock, for instance, didn't realise it and died in poverty.

[@txicocamotl]

Half-dead audience.

[@MarionWebber]

He is very narrowly focused on socio-political art. He misses the boat on beauty. Too narrow.

[@thomervin7450]

Well, at the beginning it was said that skill didn't matter to him.