A Lecture by Jerry Saltz

welcome to the Contemporary Art Museum st. Louis I'm Paul that ha the director and welcome to the 2 German distinguished speaker series and tonight I am honored and really excited that we have Jerry Saltz speaking to us and Jerry is one of those amazing quintessential New York figures he's been around forever and in a good kind of way and the speaker series has allowed us to bring a director Glenn Lowry the director of Museum Modern Art Maya Lin and artist Jeff Rosenheim a curator and an education an educator and a curator Robert store and now a critic with a capital C and Jerry is just amazing so Jerry sauce for those of you who don't know him and his work he is an energetic voice in contemporary art his voice is everywhere whether it's on the streets of New York whether it's on Facebook whether it's on the blogosphere he is his ever presence of permeating throughout contemporary art he is currently the senior art critic for New York Magazine but before that he had a very powerful and subversive role as the critic for The Village Voice in 2006 he was named the best art critic by Time Out New York he is two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist in criticism and perhaps by being here tonight in st. Louis we're with our neighbor he'll finally get one and in 1995 he was the sole advisor for the Whitney Biennial which was a very amazing exhibition and he has taught throughout he is a fantastic teacher and a lecturer he has taught at Yale at Columbia Art Institute of Chicago he is a published author he has very good books and for the students here there's a little tiny book that fries published in 1995 I believe and it's all the books that Jerry thinks is really important for you as an artist to read and if you can find it if it cost $300 on ebay should absolutely buy it Jerry's of course known for his work as a critic but he is also known for someone who is a connector he has 5000 friends on Facebook which is the maximum and he writes daily on issues and you know he's someone who walks into a room says something and say not talk amongst yourself and that's what he that's how he uses his Facebook and the fact that he has so many friends is create stories people write about how is that this guy has so many friends he also creates buzz wherever he goes so all the the topics that he rides and I don't think he can friend any more people because I think 5 thousands limit but I think you can still see his page and if you see the conversation that goes on it truly is what's going on in contemporary art right now he also creates controversy and some of the things that he says perhaps late at night in his bathrobe writing on facebook creates controversy and he's had some discussions with very powerful New York couriers and directors and I believe he will continue to do so here's a little excerpt of what he wrote to the chief curator of ps1 MoMA and this is verbatim except for the I changed some of the wording because it's inappropriate but that's that's the heartfelt response that it'll give and to create conversations and to put it out there because if you're his friend you can also comment on it and he is so popular that people create things about him such as this article which just popped up out of nowhere saying Jerry Saltz resigns from New York magazine which created an incredible buzz in the blogosphere he is so loved and wanted that people want to be Jerry Saltz so there's this guy who says I am fake Jerry Saltz but he will write things that he thinks Jerry will want to write about he's also not opposed to challenge and when Glenn Beck went on TV to to condemn contemporary art he stood up he boldly announced he challenged Glenn to say if you know so much about contemporary art why don't you Chirk curate an exhibition I don't think he's responded yet he also does things that gets everyone's attention there was a little event that he created where he said you know I've always wanted to don't read down below I'm gonna change to have an overnight at the Guggenheim Museum and what would that feel like and there's him going in and there's him getting ready for the night with a hot rum toddy most recently he got known for being on television at the the national Bravo television show work of art where he was one of the few judges who had a really interesting critical discourse on the pieces and it was really interesting to hear Jerry talked about how editing process is done and what gets left in and what gets cut out best thing about Darion that and that's his wife Roberta Smith who's the art critic at New York Times Jerry is everywhere in New York and I live in here for a long time and every opening that you should be at every show that you should go see every thing that's art related Jerry and Roberta would be there see his knowledge of New York and the contemporary art and what's been going on is vast and the best thing about Jerry is that he is he is hugely important he's informed he's now he's current sometimes controversial he's quintessential New York art world but better than that he is the champion of the artists he always fights for the underdogs and once you get to know him he's a nice guy and with that I want to welcome Jerry Saltz [Applause] thank you very very much Paul that's the best introduction of me I've ever heard I like it so much that I even started to like me I mean I love me but it's hard to like each of us loves you and then it's hard to like yourself I'm really touched by that are any of you in this room my Facebook friends raise your hand there's one dicey Wendy is there Eva of course buzz Spector Paul yay and you guys in the back ha ha no Paul is right I am NOT a 5,000 person limit but there's little wiggle room you might want to send a message that says friend me and the reason I say that is I'll probably just click yes you don't have to say anything witty because I accidentally did start this conversation on Facebook you do most things we do I think we do we do by accident you go looking for one thing and something else finds you do you know what I mean artists let me ask you this can you pick exactly what you do can you choose your style can you of course you're the one that kind of decided you'll be I will be a painter I will make abstract paintings I suppose you can decide that but the more you're around art I think the more you realize that art is stranger than that you don't choose it I hate to say something so kind of New Age hocus-pocus but in many ways your art is using you to make it art may I think art is a cosmic force do I sound just like a hippie now I think art oh here's my notes you know I thought can I talk about cosmic forces without a note whatever I think art well let me ask you this can art change the world yes yes yes okay now that was kind of a trick question can art stop the spread of aids in sub-saharan Africa can art it can with advertising okay can art cure famine and stop drought when that droughts droughts a natural thing that we could we don't know I guess what I'm saying is I think that art the answer to my question can art change the world to me is yes and know that art is part of a universal force a cosmic force that does change the world by osmosis which is in a way like your advertising thing and incrementally over time every once in a great while you can be around and some people in this room may have feel like they've witnessed it I do feel like they've witnessed the Train of our history suddenly leaping off the tracks boom and landing on another track and going in another direction can you name me a time in American art when that may have happened 1960 I think I'm with you and what was its name its name was pop art you don't have to love pop art it's not an easy art to love it's an easy one to get kind of enraptured with sleep with for a night you know wake up the next morning and go what am I doing here I love the way it's smiled at know and this is bad in st. Louis no with Andy Warhol suddenly I think you have the train not with John's and Rauschenberg so much as that is the last one hundredth of a millon anno second of European art history in them you can still feel the facture of the hand the surface the authority even of the brush but with Andy Warhol like him or hate him it doesn't matter to me the train of art history suddenly leaps off the tracks doesn't it and you have what are Warhol's real inventions if you think about it Jackson Pollock took something that had been there since the beginning the drip the drip we laugh but it was on the cave wall and you know how the cave painters got it up there they spit now you are an artist aren't you yeah they did that you you you baby artists a little tough love I'm sorry you baby artists I love you but the painters in the room most paintings are square or rectangle they're paid in on something we call canvas you never think about by the way the fact that canvas is the material that was used to wrap the dead for 5,000 years and it therefore is imbued with an extraordinary content I love you the little tough love you don't think about that most of the paintings put on canvas but for 5,000 years in Egypt by the way or stone or walls were never meant to be seen by human eyes where they they were meant to be seen in the afterlife and the underworld by the gods maybe it's God's fault you know in a judeo-christian thing I think that the second commandment or the fourth you tell me is this one thou shalt not have any other guy I forget you know I don't know what version I'm using because I'm Jewish craven there's a great great man thank you thou shalt have no gods before me because I thy Lord your God and the jealous God first of all do you know what God is telling you you dopes God is kind of saying I know there are other gods he just said I'm the no I'm the only God and yet he admits in the second commandment I am a jealous God don't worship like the Sun disc God in Egypt and don't like sail your boat just 12 hours to Greece 12 lousy hours over to Greece and they've got like gods of the grass gods of the mountains the gods are having sex with human beings it's unbelievable what's going on over in Greece it's just insane and there on the end whoever wrote these books write whatever if it's a god that's fine with me it's also on this other end of the Silk Road and you can't believe the things that were being brought in from China and India and every single God is having sex in every single piece my god no wonder he said I'm very jealous I would be jealous if I were that God and also there were rumors of boats going to Italy and who knows what the Italians were doing okay but thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image okay in other words you could make you could have art but long as it didn't look like God is that it or the human being because God makes people in the world and God asked artists not to do that don't the job description is mine if you think about it wouldn't that make marcel duchamp the most spiritual holy God in all of history because he says I will not make art I will identify something that is already in the world a urine and I will deem it art an art a work of art that changes what art is it's a urinal still and you still have to be able to explain that to your parents it's very tough mom it's still a urinal and it's kind of creepy to be looking at there but then you have to say mom it changed the idea of oh this is back to the train of art history it changed all the works of art ever made and it's a comment on all the works rather may that have ever been made even your lousy art no matter how bad you are you every work of art you make is a comment on every work of art ever made and you're putting it in the caboose of art history and God darn it it does get pulled along with it and someday I hate you for this because they're gonna forget me and the curators and the dealers and the collectors oh we hate all of you I'm on the train and you're not someday people may start to sniff around that funny smell of Versalles smell you're putting off it with their nose down near the ground and pick up a scent that leads them either to you or to someone near you or away from you if you're especially stinky Jackson Pollock those painters don't just paint back in the caves they painted mammals who here has seen a cave painting I have you have you have anybody else I want to ask you if you had I've seen them I went in southern France to a small cave which still meant walking like a mile into the earth where it was like freezing and we only were allowed to use flashlights and even then we had to turn off our flashlights and only the guide could put a flashlight on it and when I saw the hoof of one mammal I knew in a billionth of a second they were making art all the weird things we told ourselves about oh the caves are magic or they're like this - they're like that they might be that but this is the most extraordinary observation of mammals possibly in the history of our species who depicted mammals better who Stubbs is pretty good with the horses I would take a Stubbs but I'd rather have a cave painting so would you what's the most common thing painted in the caves mammals what's the second most common thing painted in the caves the handprints and here's how those painters made paintings you babies I love you they put poop in their mouths they could have mixed up paint and put it on the end of a hard stick brush with hair on the end and stuck it to canvas or well not canvas because it hadn't been invented yet they put pigment in their mouths and pulp in their mouths they did just what you said they put their hand on the wall and they went like that and then they pull their hand away and they made the first photograph they made an imprint a trace of self of the excess energy and you know to this day when you trace something while you're on the phone to a friend that there's a strange and orful release in you that you've made a trace of the world you've made a urinal you dummies and your mom is making them too that's the second most common thing that's how they made the hands and by the way we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that half of the hands half are women's hands duh everybody was in the caves and only don't forget by the way 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of all the cave paintings and caves survive that's all we're so lucky when you bump into one there's almost none I haven't been to the redone one of Lascaux have you been to the fake one the real one you are a holy person Wendy yeah who here has seen the real one yeah you we should just give you a dollar everybody in the room well the fake one I'm told as is just as good they say it's rainy in there and cold and it's really good half of the hands are by women it means that everybody was in the caves and anyone could make art just like now it's an all-volunteer army my prophets it's an all-volunteer army so when we complain bitterly about the art world which is our job oh I hate this I hate that museum I hate this person I hate that gallery the truth is every single person is doing it because they have to do it no person in this room should make art unless they absolutely positively have to make it I would not wish the life on anyone it's ungodly amounts of time alone although artists they always you call them and they go you wanna have a drink and the rest of the people in the world are going excuse me I have a job you know writers you know this Sally writers we're always working you talk to a painter it's like oh yeah I'm I went out today and I got a cardboard box and you ask a writer what they're doing you're going oh I was in hell for 18 hours anybody here ever written who here is written you know what it's like would you isn't that a terrible job it's like running a life and first gear and every there's for me as a writer there's no such thing as writing I wish that there were that I could sit down pump and it would come out and I would be happy but I write and then I rewrite there's only rewriting for me there's only rewriting for me and I write every six days every six days I panic and I like you I think that my work is no good just like you although well I'll get to you artists in a minute by the way what was the third most common thing in the caves st. Louis their penises involve us which tells you what what does it tell you you're laughing I'm not saying it again it for God's sake you decide what it tells you it tells you that those people in those caves are doing just what you used to do as a kid which was look up naughty words now I have no idea what kids are looking up on the internet it's insane but that's what they were doing it tells you kids were back in the caves too that everybody was there and the painting was something that anyone who wanted to could do and many of the young painters in this room when you were very young you were doing one of several things my guess is you were either lying on the floor pretending the ceiling was the floor anybody here done that look at all the hands going up you mentals you know these two are like oh they're together gone oh yeah we used to do that how many of you that one day just started drawing with crayons or whatever on the wall bunches of them you ruined so many apartments and hotel rooms and but something was happening you were telling you the art is a cosmic force that like us is a self-replicating energy art is reproducing itself what is art for why I don't think that art is optional I think since art was here from the beginning art is not merely a decorative hedge in front of the great kingdom of civilization I think it's all part of the same ball of wax that it's only our desire to separate them out and say well art is a decorative unnecessary force and my answer is well yeah I can understand why it seems that way because when we look at a glitter painting of a panda you think well that's not necessary is it but it turns out for whatever we are it is necessary I don't know why God knows why but we're doing again we're doing it again rather art is not optional the lawrence Wesler writes about the head jurist of the war crimes trial in The Hague in Baz about Bosnia some of the worst crimes of that decade the 1990s and he asked this judge ahead of the war crimes trial how do you listen to this these horrendous stories all day long and the judge said I go to the Hague you know what the Hague is this is where the Vermeer's live it's the house where Vermeer lives and Wechsler said to him ah you go to see the Vermeer's among the most beautiful things on the face of the earth to feel better and the judge said no that is not why I go there I do go to see the Vermeer's but I do not think I'm going there because they're beautiful and he was asked why what's going on what are you getting from the paintings and he said well I go to the Vermeer's because the Vermeer's were invented to heal pain sometimes in the art world we limit things we say we're a free world an open world but the minute you behave freely often the art world will need jerk and hate you I'm the first to admit that being on a reality TV game show about art he's probably going a little too far probably I went a little bit too far but I don't think that we must ever ever ever reduce art just like a formula like Beauty that's an empty thing everybody believes in beauty I hate to tell you that where you go I'm above Beauty man you really want to say to them Osama bin Laden would say that he would tell you he's like beauty or I believe in truth oh really well who doesn't it's almost like all the politicians that say I'm for the children well God Almighty unless you're a sociopath you're for the children it's same in the Arab world when Dave Hickey originally said Beauty he he reintroduced an idea didn't he into the discourse that had been sort of lost in the academisation of the art world and that is one of the things that the generation right before me suffered I believe I don't have any degrees so I'm kind of oversensitive and you know defensive I do have two honorary degrees I asked my friends to call me doctor doctor I asked them to make me a proctologist and a cardiologist but they don't so I guess I did have a need for like the Cowardly Lion whoever who was it the Tin Man that needed a degree and I needed one scarecrow I feel moral I was identifying as The Tin Man I felt bad just now I was thinking I don't feel Hollow whatever I am it it's not bad I'm a mess inside there's something in here a mess that loves himself this is not self hate it's it's a bad form of self-love I forgot how I got over here what was the last thing I was saying before truth I love you she's taking notes okay good okay reintroduce an idea that because the art world had been academic and I'm afraid that we lost a generation of critics to act the academic discourse I believe in that discourse because without it women would not that there's a liberation philosophies and theories are part of that discourse so never throw out the baby with the bathwater the people that I hate most you know it's like they talk about this theory or that theory and they get on your nerves but the people that get on my nerves the most are the people that go theory I hate theory and I always look at them and I go that's your theory you dummy and your theory is the most intolerant theory it's it's a tea party thing the one thing about the tea party I apologize if you're in it but I'd like to kill you because you lie so do I is it's almost like saying I believe I hate irony I only believe in sincerity but do you understand how ironic a statement that is the Tea Party is a party that only has sincerity and when you have no irony you have death to me the Oscar Wilde once said all bad poetry is sincere it's a tricky yeah no he didn't he's tricky we all must read a couple of his essays once every five years because it will test you believe me you'll kind of sit down going I thought I was smart but I have to rethink some of this a generation was lost to this academisation that didn't couldn't it's like doctors on call if you're not a cardiologist you I can't okay I don't mind they lost they did not believe here's what they believed they believed decart I think therefore I am but in the art world my profits we know that it is I experience therefore I am you are all I hate to say it more like the Marquis de Sade in your minds you've thought hmm unusual things you're not Voltaire you're not to cart you have another side not just one side but what Whitman is right you contain multitudes what's the first part of that Sally I contradict myself i contradict myself very well then I am large I contain multitudes that's what you tell art critics that give you any guff you do we contain multitudes we can't boil it down to truth beauty and all those other wonderful things and particularly I hate to say this men it's our people that do it we're in insecure people you can't hate us I don't know why I would hate us but we're in insecure nervous people who like to order the world our names are Plato and we're who over his Academy had said no one allowed here that does not believe in geometry does not believe in triangles only a man would write yes I'm giving my life to triangles because it's a denial needless to say of Whitman's chaos you are chaos art does not come from anything purebred ever never will never has never gonna never that platonic dialogue is just a mail wish for order because well we're in nervous people I don't know what it is about us but we just are we need to know when dinner is how to get there we're gonna read the map but we're very good at finding the ladder in the Attic have you ever noticed that I know you can too we lost a generation that was afraid I think it was fear to simply put out opinion I like this and this is why never I just like this that's boring to go oh I hate Titanic I love Titanic I'm much more interested in hearing you say Titanic is the story of the art world really if you think about it of something going from the state of horizontality to a state of verticality in real time one of the things that moved me in watching that 3-hour billion-dollar moot hated avatar it looked like the side of a van to me or like a celestial Seasonings package hey and this is the only movie I've ever seen where people with no clothes are completely asexual it's like everyone in the world is Richard Dreyfuss or something and the movie Titanic you can like or dislike because it happened in real time in those three hours the boat hits the iceberg at the half hour point in the movie and for the next two hours that's how long it took the world to change for a way of life to end and that really is what happened when I was at the freeze fair in 2007 on the day that laman brothers and the Stockman and the stock market dropped seven hundred points for the second time I looked around me and I saw something I had never seen before at an Art Fair stunned silence of dealers young dealers Ronny you look at me were you there that day they must the young dealers must have said to you what they said to me I mean here's one of the heroes of the art world we don't actually have an art world without one of these pillars they were saying things to me like what's happening Jerry and I said oh this is what the art will looks like 99% of the time you just happen to live through about you know 96 amazing months a time when money came into the land more money possibly than had ever been here ever before and I'm not unhappy about that I want all of the that you artists in the back row to make as much money as all the people in the front row I want you to be I want artists to be rich it's good there's nothing wrong with money you know it's like the people that write they wished the art world to have no money and I always say to them look it's a look the air is dirty but we breathe it artists I hate to say this about you but you love money artists you just love it you're so weird if you think about it how many people in this room own cats how many own dogs got the dog people sort of sat together this is weird okay what's your dog's name how can i top that quesadilla thingy thingy thing thing thing what a name KC that's a dog name you had a dog what dog names there Murphy what is Murphy a lab of what terrier like I know what an Irish wheaten terrier is what's a that's a dog okay so here's what happens when you call it I'm trying to explain to you artists who you are now and to us what they what they do and how they think what they make if you call a dog here's what happens you go Murphy come here and Murphy okay go come over put his head of her head on your lap and kind of drool I'm a cat person so that's much too much connection for me way too much you know neediness God get it out of here when you're dog of what you don't know about your dog let me just tell you a few things you dog people because this is off subject maybe the whole lectures been on subject from whenever you're not home you know what your dogs doing it's barking all day long and your neighbors are in sheer hell and every dog owner goes no not my Murphy no not my quesadilla no not my and I'm here to tell you yes they're barking all day long then the minute you walk in they're like the other thing is and they do this with me the minute they meet me on a country road they go I'm gonna kill ya you want a rumble mother and I every time I take a walk in the country I have to I walk until your dog starts to bite me and then I turn around and I can't go past that point again for the rest of the bloody summer so I have each direction mapped out and now all the dogs are sitting around going here he comes the northern dog ask me the eastern dog okay that's a direct communication with another species when you're having communication with dogs in a sense didn't they domesticate us aren't they brilliant aren't they genius eating in packs was hard especially warring with other packs of Wolf's they figured out that those mammals the very very smelly mammals that a dead cooked food threw a lot of stuff out and they the most brave Wolf's could come closer generation by generation they could come closer until they domesticated us they figured out ways to make themselves useful and we gave them the most useful things on earth to them if they could bark and warn us of like an approaching coyote then the dog has protected us and we give it one of our scraps of meat and let it live in the garage they have food and shelter what a deal we end up and then we breed them and whatever they bred us you dummies it's just like art they'd emits much more complicated than we ever we are we contain multitudes so you've had a direct communication with another species when you're speaking to a dog and it's speaking to you how many people here own cats were the cat people oh hi cat people what's your cat's name buzz Tucker notice how the the cat names will be very different charlie good and bad cute any others any cat people look the cat people really have needs to tell you yes Steve that's a very non is that did your kid named Steve a rescue cat yeah Steve is not the best animal name good bushy Butchie that's kind of a cat dog dog cat name it's a girl you're confusing your animal any other cat names here one more my luck where we said that Milo okay here's what happens if when you call Milo okay we're pushy even Steve you go come here Milo Milo whatever and here's what Milo will do so imagine that's you right in front of me I'm Milo that's the couch now watch what the cat will do oh go and then go like this and it's it's done do you see what's happened something extraordinary artists you are cats the cat put a third thing between itself and you in order to communicate you see what it did you put the couch it couldn't do what the dog can do dog I need you you need me Fu okay we're stuck together cats don't work that way cats work like artists in a way you guys most of us in the front of the room we are relatively unhappy and happy and we kiss our boyfriends and girlfriends inmates and whatever husbands wives said pets and dogs and we're happy to be loved and to love end of story you artists want to be loved by everyone everywhere for the rest of time that's pretty weird you guys are messed up and what's really really messed up about you is then you do this you put something there and you go if this is your art this like silver thing you go love me forever give me $45,000 put it at the museum and make give me a business class ticket to Turin and Venice and I will install it there and you make fun of us we are all dark but splendid you understand you contain multitudes a generation is lost to academia of not being able to say I like this I don't like this for this reason back to the Titanic if you put out the reasons in a clear and articulate way a generation is lost in language seduced by the very high-level intense English translations of French Theory never read in their original okay which is fine I can't read I've never read Dante in Italian but I trusted the languages would became inaccessible and defensive and kind of authority the opinion is gone the juice is gone the life is gone everything is gone the taste of the father's is worshipped by the children in this generation a Freudian nightmare takes place and and this is no good and it's changing now right now right now I've been seeing it over the last four or five years that the language is loosening up the language is smart listen while I don't have a degree about 99.999% of the art world does and I'm fine glad I teach you go to school good you're gonna graduate you know the secret handshake you know the codes you'll owe $100,000 I did go to school for a couple of years artists and I accrued a lot of school loans and I didn't pay for 17 years I'm sorry every single time the phone rang in my house for the first 17 years and I don't know if you're my kind of person I hope you're not I would listen very carefully to hear if I could hear kind of a long distance anonymous feel on the other end and anytime I did I'd say Jerry Saltz moved I think to California or maybe Missouri a few months ago maybe if you used to live here and and you know occasionally it really was the lone people now it's harder I understand what computers and stuff but don't be afraid of those student loans don't be afraid of them you're gonna drag them around your whole life no matter what no matter what no matter what so don't don't get scared of those people the conventionality of just making paintings this emit the most visionary tool ever invented by our species just to envision the world this a machine that absolutely nothing is real inside of a painting everything is real outside of it but nothing except it is real inside okay Emily Dickinson wrote a great first line of one of her 600 and how many great poets in front of let's say 690 some sonnets poems great first line and don't read her because it just takes a lifetime to understand her and I want you to read her but it really she's so good nobody understood absence and like the - like her that you she put a - in a sentence you'd go oh my god - it's almost like that movie The Shining Kubrick did you ever see that at one point the word Tuesday flashes on the screen and the entire audience goes haha that that's it's so fine-tune some of these arts she says I'd well impossibility that's what she meant by poetry it also has a downside of like not knowing if I've attained yet you know I dwell in my mind and what may be the future but if you think about form and format the tools that we use I dwell in possibility life is possibility poetry painting is possibility it stuns me that painting has been just reduced to a very very narrow discourse about whatever I don't even really know and we pretend it never was about flatness not really you want to ask Jackson Pollock if those drips were about platanus you go huh no nobody would say that's about flatness Warhol's great invention like Pollock before him he discovered something that was there from the beginning he put colors together that no one had ever put together before in the history of the world it's like pop music three chords they exist they're put together in a slightly different beat tempo and a slightly different pattern with new instruments it always helps to have new tools new materials art is the embedded the power to be able to embed thought in material for the poet poetry is material you have to understand that I'm the last living person that likes Matthew Barney for Matthew for Matthew Barney narrative is a material you see you embed thought and material that's what really great art is and that's what Warhol did other people had used repetition that wasn't really that new and some of this poppy subject matter again Rauschenberg who was with everybody in town and I'm told every single person that ever met him went I love Robert Rauschenberg he just put off the vibe he put off the vibe at so I when I met Matthew Barney I was the first person to write on him and whenever I'm around and I have a blind spot for his work the other for me that was a moment of the art history train not the art history train but art not the history train art jumping off the tracks for you guys it's not a big deal it's fine when I saw his work the first time I was with my wife in a bad group show in a bad gallery in New York City Althea via for a god lover she's a really great person the gallery since closed it was a bad group show with a million artists and my wife and I walked in because I see 30 or 40 shows a week because I believe that bad art teaches you as much as good art in fact my profits I actually think it can tell you more sometimes because when we go to MoMA the real tragedy of MoMA of spending a billion dollars on this handsome building it's handsome from the outside what they don't know in the art world still doesn't get the truth is we don't care what the Builder the museums look like from the outside the truth really is you want to make them pretty from the outside yeah it's very pretty here it's very ugly we only care about the inside give us enough space for this this machine this greatest visionary machine in the history of our species a little thing we call art give it enough space and let people take a look at it and they forgot to do that at MoMA they didn't build a single square foot more with the billion dollars than they had knocked down instead they built more people moving space more party space much handsomer space again again I'm not against your for architects but you can only see the tops of the Himalayas at this beautiful Museum this Garden of Eden where all of us are from we all can return to the garden to commune with the ancestors too we must never turn our back on this sad sad sad garden because you're all from there and it's how you can replant us yourself in your own engine by going back to the sad garden I'm not crying for me I kind of forgot how I got here because I get so emotional about MoMA Barney was just a moment I'm trying to say where I thought I saw one possible future of art contemporary art of way of artists would be transmuting Joseph boys and Joan Jonas and a lot of other endowment obviously a lot of 70s art I suddenly saw a body that seemed to be transmuting the fad of Joseph boys into muscle or something else to narrative in his own body and I was absolutely floored breathless astonished the back of my head felt like it was on fire and I went and got my wife Roberta Smith who I I love my work I think she's the real deal you should have her here she's not as user-friendly but she's hardcore you know a gatekeeper you know I'm more of a keymaster like Oh take the key I don't care stay out late just be home by 2:00 if you can where Roberta's like where were you what have you done I got Roberta and I said you know c'mere honey come here and it was a you know Barney crawling up and down putting Vaseline in his bellybutton and I said look at this videotape and she looked at it for a long time and I and I was like getting ready for her to say the future is you know business Bruce Springsteen you know and she looked at me and went I said what do you think what do you think honey she said it's so male that she walked away and she's never thought about Barney so to each their own in the errant world Warhol took these colors that had never been put together and what his other what's the other great formal invention that Warhol did he allowed the silk screens to skid just nothing just a thing where everyone else before then had either made them intentionally Dada and Messi like the great rauschenberg our Picasso whether you like him or not yeah he probably should have hung up his brushes at some point but the more you look at rauschenberg are you guys having this you look at Rosenberg from the 70s and you're like it's much better than we thought much better even some of those silly cardboard boxes that he was folding I was looking at them going oh my god even you know you start to trust certain artists that they're telling you something like cats that Warhol unlike a Dada gesture of making it messy or there are minimalism which made it neat Warhol that was his content of his self he gave up the authority of the brush he gave up the authority of the surface he gave up the authority of painting and that is breathtaking people would look at that work and go they still look at it and go you know what is that if you cut and you know who else has this little Jeff Koons you may hate him too if you sliced these guys open and sent a space probe into them for 50,000 miles they travel let's just say they'll hit nothing these guys did it all artists are trying to take the inside and put it on the outside without and this is a Heisenberg uncertainty almost impossibility without changing what the inside really looks like but needless to say the minute you attempt to show the inside you're changing it by just saying look at me dance naked in public already you're saying I'm a needy dog I'm a weird person what my parents didn't give me is taking a lifetime to fill sorry but they successfully turned themselves they found a way to do it inside out and emptied themselves so that what you see on the surface is what they are now that's not good or bad but that's miraculous you try to do that that's why Warhol still of strange interest to us this strange creature that made irony a Content an irony is nothing other than the awareness of being able to step outside of oneself and go oh I'm here that's all irony is it doesn't it's not always a negative irony anyway I've been babbling I haven't really I didn't finish Jackson Pollock I could have gone all the way back to him and said the things he made he dripped he discovered something that had been left there for since the beginning did no one used and he only dripped for 48 months you guys you make fun of him as Jack the dripper never seen paintings of Pollock painting pictures of Pollock painting here's how he drew very family yeah yes he had a cigarette in his mouth but he was bald and these guys waited much longer than we all do for fan they waited into their 40s and sometimes 50s and they were bitter male alcoholics and you will be too even you women and they lived in a world without women not ours so you know it was effed up I know that but what Pollock did and what I'm gonna ask you if you can do before I finish I want to maybe show a couple pictures too is he painted he dripped for 48 months he became this most famous artist he sold his work he did this while he was sober as most of you know and then he thought I'm repeating myself artists listen to me he thought I'm repeating myself and so he will willingly went back to hell of not knowing what he was doing I'm going to say an artist named who I don't think did that so I don't want you to get mad at me because I'm an art critic so I'm allowed to say what I do and don't like you're allowed to but whatever Jim died never did that he made his hearts and robes and birds and Pinocchio's and he just kept making them and he's a bazillionaire and he gets to sleep with anybody and he's in there art history books and good for him but Pollock this guy you make fun of a lot 48 months of Dripping that's it and then he decides I'm gonna change my work I'm gonna go back to hell willingly and needless to say killed him started drinking again he killed himself basically Mondrian knew he was dying he knew he was dying and all the directors of all the museums on the East Coast had been in his studio about a month before and they saw painting that was better than Broadway boogie-woogie that he figured out the next steps from Broadway boogie-woogie and then he died a few weeks later they went back in the studio and he had completely painted out that painting and changed it knowing he could never ever finish it why did he do that artists why did he do it buzz Spector rightfully says I thought he did it because something else came to him even though he knew he would never finish it he knew you know does that make him brave makes him an artist you make what you can make because you can't not make it look at Philip Guston I want you to find your inner gusting artists can you imagine what Gustin would have thought of himself at the beginning of his career if I said to him dude by the end of your career you're gonna be painting big bulbous hairy Ku Klux Klansmen driving around smoking cigars he would say well I'll just kill myself now artists you must be able not must but I want you to think about inventing a machine in your work allowing a machine to be invented in your work that creates things that you cannot predict that it will spin off that's why I like Mathieu Barney's work that's the only reason I just think he might be as surprised as you are hating it or liking it about what's coming out some artists just need to paint dots what happens if you wake up in the morning and you go I'm a dot painter there's a couple of striped painters in the room going oh I'd paint stripes there's the rectangle painters and the square painters and the Bloch painters and the you know the fog painters when artists come to me in school and say you know I I paint you know blotches Jerry and my teachers were saying well everybody's already painted kind of blotchy paintings I always say to artists never ever listen to anybody that says to you it's been done before never that was my paradigm we Wendy I some of us we in another period when that was really crucial that that was radical that was revolutionary it was about make it new but that's silly now well so when artists now say to me Mae that's to almost Descartes it's a mind-body separation because nothing is really new nothing is to start reproducing itself through you what I say to my students is when they say you know the teacher said you it's already been made I always I always say make it again and make it again and let's just say you need to paint the American flag that's a tough one if that's your assignment and I would say yeah you know it's been done before but I would still say do it again try doing it 30 40 50 60 times and call me in the tens 20s 34 and we'll see if you got anything and if you don't at the end I'll say maybe make it the Turkish flag everybody likes the Turkish flag or the Brazilian flag is good or like if you're Israeli you could maybe throw that in I don't know I'm not an artist but if I'm okay with you doing that which is done before because art is not an option he's part of a cosmic force that's been here from the beginning it's still here it is what it is we don't know what it is that's the interesting thing nobody can define what it is it doesn't have doesn't have that kind of it is what you guys make is what art is it's a tautology that way but that's not my problem I should stop now because I have been talking for an hour and that's probably too long I'd love to take some questions here would be the conditions you got to ask a question you can't make a statement yeah you know gives everybody a headache I've already given you a headache so don't ruin the night more by makin you have to ask a simple direct loud question like you might want to know how do you get famous how do you do this how do you do that why on God's name were you on a reality TV King show anything you've ever I haven't even talked about my work as usual I've talked about yours but before I ask for questions I'll just say thank you very very much st. Louis for this museum I want to say this in closing in New York I live in a ready-made our world I do I love my art world I can't live without it I'm desperate to be in it but it's there for me and whenever I go to any gallery in New York I always pretend like I'm not thrilled to bump into you but secretly inside I'm always like in the art world in New York it's there for me in st. Louis you had to make it out of yourselves what Barnett Newman said when they asked how are you making this our world he said we are making it out of ourselves there are heroes in this room great pillars unbelievable rope right now in this building is being unspooled by under the tutelage of paul ha of allowing his very good curators enough rope to curate crapola shows that's what we're looking for you know fail for me but just fail flamboyantly don't fail the way we're failing in Chelsea which is mediocre but we can't help it because our our airwaves are so expensive you know what a museum show in New York the kind of attention it gets you want to dance naked there you better lose you know a lot of weight you know get in a lot of shape really get your hair fixed up right because you know we're all looking at you and it gets out of scale in New York and as a result we have great shows but that's all we have even if they stink it's always the same top of the Himalayas you don't know how high the mountains are unless you see the whole picture and I think when I come to st. Louis place I've been a number of times I'm always reminded of the greatness of art and also the hardness but the beauty of making it out of yourself so I thank you very much for coming here tonight I know I've kind of talked your ear off and you're kinda got to go to the bathroom you really want to leave if you want to leave I'm not insulted too much or hurt but if there any questions very simple direct I'll answer a few with hopefully simple direct questions the first I saw way in the back of man sitting yes ah are you in the Tea Party booth you hate me you hate me I hate you but we love each other here's why I felt it here's why I felt it I want to ask you one simple question then and I will not argue back with you I promise you this you get the last word did you vote for Obama no one in the Tea Party did not one person doesn't it tell you anything okay I accept it I hope we don't come to a civil war I love you You Love Me we just hate each other right now but I think this might work out I think your team's gonna have a big victory you know and we'll see what you really want go for it go for it I'm happy for you if this is what you want do it next question if I said anything insulting why did I do it because I feel it very very strongly and everything I said tonight is more or less in that category yes right if I say you can what and why here's what I think if you can learn from bad art she says can you identify what was the worst show in New York and why I'm gonna give you pretty of simple answer I'm a big fan of the Larry Gagosian Gallery you already know what I'm going to say there's a big show I love Larry good if we don't have a big circus like that if Larry decides to move to London and leave us that's not so good so before you throw our babies with bathwater which the art world always need jerks and says all Larry Gagosian bad that's not true he's got to show up now of a beautiful six foot six young man named Ann Cologne who knew you now I won't even say what New York magazine said and the work is terrible it's trash their paintings the Jackson Pollock's made out of chewing gum that's fine with me you want to make a Jackson Pollock out of chewing gum no problem you want to charge 300g for it it's a little gross but I understand our just love money he put a you know a skateboarding pike upside down it's been done a lot in galleries but he needed to do it the reason I think the show is so bad is because it's a celebration of the deleterious values of around 2007 when art really was just a placeholder for investors you wanted a Damien Hirst didn't matter what the f it looked like and by the end and Hearst in the very beginning a real renegade pumpkin I mean it he helped D Island eyes England with his incredible anger and will anyway people like Morikami Hearst they think they can play the system Dan cologne you think you can play the system but I'm my guess is unless you're like Andy and maybe a few more maybe Jeff I know you hate that I says but the system is playing them and the reason I hate the show especially is because kills discourse and it makes everybody have the exact same opinion you couldn't get one off word you were there in New York anybody see the show here yeah that's the kind of drawback of having seen it you go oh well so that's what I could I I would like to say in general I would frown on this trying to return to the good old days of 2007 of saying that art is is decadent placeholder game for collectors yes that's one of the things that it is for some people but let's not just celebrate it of course the art world then knee-jerk and said Larry Gagosian bad well that's not true at all gyojin has another show of town of a pretty unknown mid-career its name Dyke Blair that's very very good and respectable and very low profile so does that answer your question at all did you have anybody in mind that you hate right now name a name but nobody's listening we're alone and I'll tell you what I think we can play bloodsport together you're close you come back to me any other quit yes artists here was the question does it change my opinion if the art to show I'm seeing may not have been made by hand by that artist no I do not care how you get your art into that gallery if you can job it out into China go ahead I find very every photographer on earth almost has never actually touched their work if you want to total up all the time the greatest photographers on earth ever worked mmm one and a half seconds you know if you mean like the hundredths of a second but I don't care very few artists however can get away with not touching their work and still in bed thought into the material but it can be done it's a very metaphysical thing again not to over stress it but I think that Warhol did it probably Jasper Johns would be humanly incapable of it because everything is about his you know urge to make those tiny little brushstrokes over and over and over and touch everything and in my opinion Koons has been able to pull it off from time to time mostly no but when he does it sends me so I do never ever put the handmade as the highest value I put the made I'm interested in it I don't care if it's a Neolithic stone I like stones that have been standing up nobody made the damn thing somebody just stood the damn thing up I'll worship it because thou shalt have no other gods before me any other questions quickly yes the Laura the great young curator yay now I know I embarrass you I'm like an uncle yeah yeah well Laura Laura's asking over the years if I found myself now being more generous or harder I have to say you you're almost like in my head right now Wow I'm thinking a lot about that and I have in my heart been feeling much more generous as I get older I don't know what it is it's the scale I'm writing on New York Magazine is shiny glossy paper it's read by a lot of non our world people and I'm aware of them I've never wanted to write just for our art world I don't I love art magazines but I never wanted to write just for them ever and so now when I go to a crapola biennial or a terrible Greater New York or something what's happening for me and it's ruining my criticism I'm sure and it's a weakness in me and it would you know may be the end of me I don't know I see that eight artists out of the 55 that I like and I start to let those eight be the dominant factor for me and then after I write that I'm always have to slap myself and go well from 90% of the art world they only stay saw the 45 crap artists and so people are thinking my work is off and I'm if I don't adjust that to take in my reader because I don't write for the artist I don't even write for me but I'm really writing for the reader and if I don't take in my reader and really question that something's gonna go off in my work and I've got to fix this - my last three biennials I made this mistake I did it on Greater New York my stomach kept saying bad show Jerry bad show Jerry and I kept going but I liked these three artists and in my head they became the whole show that's inexcusable really I don't know what's going on novice and as I see more and I want my and I'm also one other minor thing I'm really questioning the form of what I'm doing more than anything these I've noticed that since I write for magazines and probably worse when you're my age there won't be many magazines they just won't exist there are only gonna be three newspapers probably New York Times Wall Street Journal USA Today sorry hopefully those three will survive it might just be the journal and the Wall Street and then that guy that left will be very happy the tip of the PT Party guy because then that side that side will have one and that's fine with me whatever people want anyway long story short I'm thinking a lot about the form of criticism since it's probably not going to exist on pace I need paper especially and that's why I'm experimenting in every way I can to see since there is no money in art criticism anyway yeah no way you're not gonna make money you guys in the back if you think yes I'll be a critic and make money nope even the most famous critics make very little they got a hundred bucks for a review blah blah blah I'm trying to play since there is no money in this anyway and you artists should be doing this too since you don't have to make one kind of art you can make every kind of art that crosses your stupid little mind you don't have to just be a painter or sculptor you can make anything you want listen we drink cider but the apples existed but you had to make the cider make cider we eat wheat but we had to make that wheat okay make wheat out of what's already there what I'm trying to say is I'm trying to experiment with every possible form I can lay my little mitts on that's why I have this silly Facebook page where I make an idiot of myself and a lot of people do but I'm interested instead of having the one speak to the many of the idea of the many speaking to one another coherently not like crazy name-calling at the end of every comment thread but actually see if it's possible to have a coherent rational rational irrational monstrosity a 5000 headed Oregon that's what I'm interested on Facebook when I went on the stupid reality TV show I wanted to perform art criticism for a much bigger audience I think I did okay on TV but as I listened my wife never watched one single chapter she of course approved that I would do the show I would never do it otherwise I was paid nine hundred dollars per episode so I didn't get rich when I saw me on TV how they edited it it I don't complain about I knew going in I thought I was not clear or articulate enough about why I liked and disliked the work I thought I had a pretty good personality I was much thinner I can't stand it I looked okay I was good if the person that was not edited well everything was edited more or less how you saw it except the one st. Louis person I'll be really honest with you in the arguments Jeanne Greenberg was the alpha male all the time in our arguments which she liked you know how whenever you've been on a panel one person has a kind of say where you're sort of focused and listening to them and you go yeah maybe they're right because I don't know but Jeanne is much faster and brighter much funnier than they cut her and they cut her just to be a gorgeous stylish you know art dealer I don't think that hurt I don't think it was mean I but that was the only thing off the thing I'm trying to get to about the TV show is while I watched the TV show and thought hmm not what I was looking for I didn't perform as well as I thought as some of you may have noticed I started writing these recaps afterwards did you read them I hate you for not reading them and accidentally what I did is I started reading the comments that started coming in and started in the scores and then the hundreds than the thousands and then it became a quarter of a million words generated because I started responding back so people would say dear Jerri you flaming a blah blah blah and I'd go and I would address them and and haven't decide this is not going to hurt my feelings I did this weird thing let's see an artist I want you to be able to have something better than thin skin you know you're such baby sometimes if I go well I didn't like the sculpture but I do like the paintings for the rest of your career you won't talk to me you big baby it's just my opinion you can't let anything be guided by rejection if you're ever ever ever guided by rejection then you're listening to the wrong demonic force you know just what am I trying to say so I started to respond to people on the New York Magazine he's still talking and it's at the New York magazine site and found that there was another forum for criticism I'm stunned astonished that young critics don't form online magazines and start these conversations with 5,000 headed organisms why not what authority are you afraid to give up there is no Authority the higher you move up in each world that you are in there's a really queer thing and I've anybody that's moved very high up in a world you'll realize nobody's in charge I hate to tell you this but this goes all the way to the top so like when you've ever been at the UN the place is falling apart you're there and you go nobody's in charge of this world it's just nothing anyway any other quick question yes very quick now I'm really going to give like a rapid-fire thank you I did too thank you and I'm not trying to disown the show I loved every second of it every sense okay do you call yourself an artist then my definition okay then your sometimes an artist I never questioned it I'm gonna be honest with you if you call yourself an artist you're an artist my only job I don't define it I'm sorry I'm not trying to be cagey I'm only interested in trying to define what I think is good and bad art I'll tell you if you're a bad artist I want to start another website another form of criticism it's going to be a bloodbath it's going to be called art or not instead of hot or not it's going to be art or not where you send your 1.jpg to me in public and you go art or not and I go no you're a bad artist really why not why not so this this old guy you know old Jew in New York doesn't like it work so what that's all you find out that's why the better artists on that show might have had an advantage of not winning sometimes having the negative stamp on you won't hurt but I don't define art art is whatever an artist tells me they make yes Keith Tyson has invented a machine that is makes a different work of art every time and that produces a form of static noise and chaos a lack of commitment and attention to certain things that need a little more attention he answered it but that's not the only prescription its art is we don't know what it is but we know what it is when we see it like pornography do you love Tyson's work right when it seemed to have some coherence in the fact that it was spinning off in any direction now it seems willed defiant hubris filled mail what contrived its you are the vehicle it is moving through you my work every single one of us in this room that has made anything always goes it's that great Bob Dylan quote when somebody asked how did how did you write whatever song and he goes yeah how the hell would somebody ever write a song like that whenever you've done anything that you think is even this good you go what the hell is that you know I was trying I want to write like Dante or Emily Dickinson or Whitman those are my gods but I can't I try really hard but yet no matter what I do I can't and yet something else comes out of me while I'm but I'm gonna tell you this artists you better be self-critical not to the suicide point for God's sake look can I really honest watch this when you're sitting in your studio alone at night and you're going I don't have enough time I don't live in the right place I'm really kind of a sham okay and you're feeling depressed and you want to get but you're bumming out bad dark night of the soul here's what I want you to do when the suicide meters going up like this there you go yeah I don't really I don't I'm a bad schmoozer I didn't really go to the right school I don't really know art history but right here my lovelies my prophets I want you to say but I'm an effin genius [Music] I want you to be delusional because no one is gonna believe in your stupid art as much as you you make squares this one puts words together that one like curates shows whatever you're gonna be gone in a hundred years anyway a couple of you'll be remembered what I'm asking is don't listen to the demons but listen to them just enough and Paul's telling me it is time to stop and I'm sorry I've gone so long but you have to be a incredibly complex combination of very self-critical of always putting pressure on your work so you don't go Jim dine on people's ass and just start like getting into gear and going although dying invented fire so he earned the right to make robes for the rest of time so you have to you haven't even earned that but I want to tell you something you have to be both self-critical and delusional in equal measure that's all I'll tell you I think I won't give you this I'm not going to give you the last one thank you well thank you everyone for coming [Applause]

Channel: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

Views: 24,386

Rating: 4.7153559 out of 5

Keywords: Jerry Saltz, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, Art, Art Criticism, Susan Sherman Annual Distinguished Speaker

Id: oOFfNs4B6EE

Length: 88min 32sec (5312 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 30 2018