John Baldessari, the 79-year-old conceptualist, has spent more than four decades making laconic, ironic conceptual art-about-art, both good and bad. Jerry Saltz artbadbaldessari Change image and share on social
The giant white cube is now impeding rather than enhancing the rhythms of art. It preprograms a viewer's journey, shifts the emphasis from process to product, and lacks individuality and openness. It's not that art should be seen only in rutty bombed-out environments, but it should seem alive. Jerry Saltz aliveartbomb share on social
Abstraction is one of the greatest visionary tools ever invented by human beings to imagine, decipher, and depict the world. Jerry Saltz abstractionbeingdecipher Change image and share on social
Almost all institutions own a lot more art than they can ever show, much of it revealing for its timeliness, genius, or sheer weirdness. Jerry Saltz artgeniusinstitution Change image and share on social
Calling a young artist 'great' these days can give one the heebie-jeebies: The word has been denatured in the past decade. Jerry Saltz artistcallday Change image and share on social
Marlene Dumas is one of the two or three most successful female artists alive, if you judge by prices. I've never reviewed her work, because I find nothing in it to get excited about no matter how hard I look. Jerry Saltz aliveartistduma share on social
A saboteur in the house of art and a comedienne in the house of art theory, Lawler has spent three decades documenting the secret life of art. Functioning as a kind of one-woman CSI unit, she has photographed pictures and objects in collectors' homes, in galleries, on the walls of auction houses, and off the walls, in museum storage. Jerry Saltz artauctioncollector share on social
I see 30 to 40 gallery shows a week, and no matter what kind of mood I'm in, no matter how bad the art is, I almost always feel better afterward. I can learn as much from bad art as from good. Jerry Saltz afterwardartbad Change image and share on social
As I made my way through 'On Line,' the austere, stridently dogmatic, sometimes revelatory exhibition 'about line' at MoMA, I found myself thinking, 'Someone please wake me when the seventies are over!' In the empire of curators, the sun never sets on the seventies. It is the undead decade. Jerry Saltz austerecuratordecade share on social
Pictures artists staged their own images or copied or cut out others already in existence. The viewer took them in separately, in sometimes paradoxical waves: an original image, then the manipulations of it, then the places where image and idea intersected. This created a crucial perceptual glitch that irony and understanding filled. Jerry Saltz artistcopycreate share on social