Our crackpot team of researchers has uncovered this video of a secret meeting between Jerry “I hate relational aesthetics today” Saltz and Charles “people are vulgar now that I’m not king” Saatchi in a Finnish sauna.
Jerry Saltz
Posted inArt
Work of Art Recap: Hitting Da Streets, Tiger Penises
OMG guys, the artistes have arrived in Brooklyn. China Chow announces the challenge. They artists have to do street art! In Williamsburg! So hood. It’s a team challenge, too. Apparently art is the new Quidditch.
Posted inArt
Work of Art Recap: Childhood Traumas Revisited
This week’s Work of Art begins with a staple of Bravo reality competition shows: children and foreboding music. Ah yes, this is the week our artistes must show that they can handle the youngins. But then, another surprise! OMG IT’S CARRIE BRADSHAW. She gives them their challenge: the artists have to make a piece complimenting work of the children brought in. And so the exploitation of children begins.
Posted inOpinion
Work of Art Recap: Naked Pixxx, Generally Too Much Information on the Artists Sexual Histories
This week’s Work of Art begins with the arrival of our intrepid artistes at the Phillips de Prury auction house. They follow a line of tin cans until low and behold! A mountain of tin cans! Next to one Andy Warol’s soup can paintings! Guess what kids, it’s time for a Pop art challenge!
Posted inOpinion
Work of Art Recap: Jerry Saltz Touches Wooden Balls, Simon de Pury Talks Bowel Movements
Bravo’s massively entertaining (at least to us) Work of Art is back! Or at least it came back last week. Apologies for the lack of a recap; we were too distracted by Sexy Ugo to write anything down. But since he was eliminated, it’s no longer an issue! We can focus on the art! And Jerry Saltz fondling wooden testicles!
Posted inArt
Seeing Through the Crowds at the 2011 Venice Biennale Part II: The Arsenale
The Arsenale and its Corderie (Rope Walk) compose the remainder of the curatorial effort of the Biennale’s director. It is the sprawling nasty sibling of the Padiglione Centrale, and is somewhat of a chore to tackle. The entire layout of the Arsenale this year feels disjointed. On a whole, I felt like there was a dearth of strong work. I believe Curiger had aspirations to move beyond the trends of participatory art and ostentatious work seen everywhere else in Venice and other art fairs.
Posted inOpinion
The Art Kids Are Not Alright
Jerry Saltz is like the art world’s hip uncle. But is he getting too curmudgeonly to hang with the kids? In the critic’s recent New York Magazine essay, Saltz calls young artists “Generation Blank” for being not original enough and too digestible by critics — cliche. Meanwhile, other art youth compare GIF size.
Posted inArt
Photos from the 54th Venice Biennale, Part 3
More images from the world’s oldest and largest art biennial event, the Venice Biennale, including photos from the American, Egyptian, Iraqi, Israeli and Polish pavilions, view of various social events and other random sightings.
Posted inArt
How to Be a Freelance Art Writer
Being a freelance art writer in New York is as outwardly glamorous as it has ever been; that is, not glamorous at all. Sure, I have the freedom to wake up at 10:00 am everyday and traipse around Brooklyn armed with a carton of 27’s, my laptop, and $8 for four cups of coffee and several bananas. A the same time, I also have the freedom to make very little money. Here are some lessons learned while writing about art.
Posted inArt
Today’s New York Protest for Ai Weiwei [UPDATE]
At 1pm EST today near the Chinese embassy in Manhattan, out by the water at 520 Twelfth Avenue, a congregation of chairs gathered. Art worlders, community members and human rights activists came out in force, to the tune of a few hundred, to protest for the release of Ai Weiwei, the internationally-famed artist who has been detained by the Chinese government for the past two weeks without charge. Click through to check out a photo essay of the protest featuring a diverse group of chairs, Jerry Saltz and protesters young and old (plus a dog concerned for Panda Bears).
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week … what makes an artist a professional, taking Rirkrit Tiravanija’s relational aesthetics for a joyride, Jan Gossaert at the Nat’l Gallery, post-Katrina New Orleans, a history of title design in cinema, stereoscopic pics as GIFs, Eli Broad’s art collection, Google Street View as art & in China …
Posted inBooks
Reading Jerry Saltz’ Seeing Out Louder
Though the art world seems to have recovered from crisis mode with the enthusiastic approach to (and beginning) of Art Basel Miami Beach 2010, the remnants of our previous recession-driven apocalypse are still close at hand. Auction successes are blazing beacons of money, but seem shaky and could prove to be singular. Museum administrations have become dangerously insular, commercially driven and intermixed with business and political influences. In comes Jerry Saltz’ Cassandra paean Seeing Out Louder, a collection of the critic’s writing from 2003 to 2009.
