how many times have i said the same....

it had to be said

"In the last years of the boom, numerous artists came to the fore who have their esthetic heads up the esthetic asses of Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, Cady Noland and Christopher Wool. They make punkish black-and-white art and ad hoc arrangements of disheveled stuff, architectural fragments and Xeroxed photos. This art deals in received ideas about appropriation, conceptualism and institutional critique. Before the schadenfreud-aholics concur, I am not talking about artists like Wade Guyton, Kelly Walker or Josh Smith, all of whom deploy the above artists in optically original and intellectually complex ways, but hordes of wannabe followers who do so in safely imitative unoriginal ways. These second-stringers have spawned a cool school, admired by jargon-wielding academics who write barely readable rhetoric explaining why looking at next to nothing is good for you. Many of these artists have sold a lot of work, and most will be part of a lost generation. They thought they were playing the system; it turned out that they were themselves being played...

'Younger' should be much more exciting than it is. For long stretches it is just the same old rote conceptualism and latest iterations on retreaded ideas (curators everywhere love this kind of art). The show is filled with frustrating moments, most of which occur when the curators conform too completely to biennial habit, choosing art that follows standard conventions of late-late-late conceptualism...

'Younger than Jesus' indicates that the alchemical essence known as the sublime, the primal buzz of it all, is no longer in God or nature or abstraction. These young artists show us that the sublime has moved into us, that we are the sublime; life, not art, has become so real that it’s almost unreal. Art is being reanimated by a sense of necessity, free of ideology or the compulsion to illustrate theory. Art is breaking free. Even the New Museum itself, founded in 1977, is 'younger than Jesus.' Since it reopened in December 2007, it’s become, despite its clinical spaces and a couple of misfires, the most consistently challenging, polemical art institution in the city. It, like the art in this show and everywhere, is being reborn." Jerry Saltz
"JESUS" SAVES

let's all fly to NY

By Jerry Saltz

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don't worry LA...we still have the Hammer. wink.

AIDS-3D, ''OMG Obelisk,'' 2007. MDF, electroluminescent wire, steel, hot glue, acrylic paint and fire. Courtesy the New Museum.

snippets from jerry

"...A well-known museum curator sidled up and swooned, 'Lisa’s paintings are as rich as Vermeer’s and Boucher’s. They’re as sumptuous as the background of the Mona Lisa.' I blinked silently until she mentioned Courbet. Then I bitchily snipped, 'If you think these paintings have that kind of mojo, you’ve either never looked at those paintings or you know nothing about painting—which I’ve written about you.' We smiled at each other and parted. I love the art world.
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Josh Smith’s densely hung painting show, which was at Luhring Augustine until last week, comes at you with an intense optical force that accurately replicates the psychic energy of our topsy-turvy world. Smith’s paintings look like swirling, multicolored wallpaper patterns with green leaves or jumping fish in the middle. His surfaces shift from handmade to printed to Xeroxed and entice, confuse, and zap the eye. His sense of design, abstraction, and figuration all come forward at once. The paintings are well-made and smart but not about being 'important.' This releases all sorts of fresh air into the space around his painting, painting in general, and exhibitions. Two years ago a show like this might have seemed like a marketing ploy; now it feels like life. Whatever it was, it gave me a rush..."
Jerry Saltz: After the Orgy, New York Mag

jerry, you still make the art world fun and exploratory, kudos!

What’s Selling (or Not) at the Armory Show /// Jerry Saltz

Best Saltz line: "...don't leave a brother hanging..." and with a high-five! totally lovely!

ticket booth

"...Several Fridays ago, I spent an hour reading the 875 years between A.D. 38,658 and A.D. 39,533. It was one of the odder hours I’ve ever spent in a gallery..." Saltz from:
Reeling In the Years: On Kawara’s latest show calls for participants to read long lists of dates. Sounds easy, right?

Read it! Jerry makes you feel that you are living the piece through him.

making a list...

don't miss jerry's best of 2008 list in ny mag!
• The Year in Superlatives
• The Top Nine Shows (and One Event)

why is jerry sleeping in the guggenheim?

Saltz opens his review
S: I have always wanted to have sex in a museum.

Then goes on to share his disappointment of the theanyspacewhatever exhibit:
S: So we’re left with a show that fizzles instead of sizzles.

Then concludes with his happy ending:
S: As breakfast (tea, croissants, pain au chocolat) was wheeled toward me, I noticed that I felt refreshed—that the Guggenheim, where I’d been a thousand times, looked utterly new to me. I was in love with the place. The museum had become a cradle of sorts; the environment seemed whole and enveloping. I had the strange feeling of having merged with the structure, like we really had slept together.

The next week, when I returned to the show by day, I noticed that when I passed by the bed where I spent that night, I was filled with tender feelings. It was like walking in a city and looking up at a window in a building and remembering a long-ago night when you’d had sex there. Weirdly, however, I was also filled with something like jealousy. I felt like “my museum” was sleeping with everyone else. I found myself wondering why the Guggenheim hadn’t called the next day.

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As usual, pleasantly satisfied with jerry's writing.

saltz on the economy + *frieze*

Today's story is from Mr. Saltz. Go here for to read the full story, excepts below:

from - At London’s big art fair, signs of financial trouble abound. But maybe that’s okay.

...In fact, though, things were different. Those of us who have frequented Frieze could see that something was off. Dealers and assistants who in recent years were always busy with clients now stood or sat quietly... Although the megagalleries like Gagosian and White Cube teemed with moneyed types and very tall women in very high heels, many younger dealers looked perplexed.

...If the art economy is as bad as it looks—if worse comes to worst—40 to 50 New York galleries will close. Around the same number of European galleries will, too. An art magazine will cease publishing. A major fair will call it quits—possibly the Armory Show, because so many dealers hate the conditions on the piers, or maybe Art Basel Miami Beach, because although it’s fun, it’s also ridiculous. Museums will cancel shows because they can’t raise funds. Art advisers will be out of work. Alternative spaces will become more important for shaping the discourse, although they’ll have a hard time making ends meet.

...As for artists, too many have been getting away with murder, making questionable or derivative work and selling it for inflated prices. They will either lower their prices or stop selling. Many younger artists who made a killing will be forgotten quickly.

...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.

...With luck, New Museum curator Laura Hoptman’s wish will come true: “Art will flower and triumph not as a hobby, an investment, or a career, but as what it is and was—a life.”

jerry saltz, nymag
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I gotta say that as far as art criticism goes, I always manage to fully read his reviews without skimming or falling asleep. If only more critics would get to the point without jacking-off to art-speak and description.

Saltz in the Brooklyn Rail

Rail: How would you define originality?

Saltz: I never say “MAKE IT NEW!” I say make it surprising or boring in an interesting way or make it seem to put off more energy than might have gone into making it. A good Pollock is like the burning bush: It burns but doesn’t burn out. You don’t use it up. Artists can be unoriginal in very original ways. Richard Prince said: “Don’t make it new, make it again.” I agree. When my students fret that what they’re doing has been done before I always say, “Don’t worry. See what happens if you do it.” No words can describe the mystery, mysticism, and power of doing that. I hate it when older teachers tell art students that art used to be good but now it isn’t. I tell students to ask those teachers, “When was the last time art was good?” The teachers usually answer, “When I was your age.” When they say that, a student should smile and imagine them dead.