Art Critic Jerry Saltz on How to Be an Artist

yes good welcome everyone and thank you for joining today's program in a sea air home my name is Ben Hartley I'm the executive director at the National Arts Club I'm so happy today to have Jerry Saltz and Andrew goldstein joining us for those of the you who don't know us the National Arts Club is a 501c3 nonprofit we prevent 150 free programs a year in our beautiful historic mansion on Gramercy Park over 40,000 people come and enjoy the programs if you don't get a chance to come to the club one day soon we hope please follow us on YouTube you can see this program repeated on youtube or come to our website we do programs on a regular basis to do three four and five times a week and today it's my great pleasure to introduce you to Jerry Saltz 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner art critic for New York Magazine and general all-around art world planner and sage he's joined by Andrew Goldstein who is editor in chief of net Andrews an old friend and colleague former colleague and Atman is the world's most read news publication covering art world and the art market truly a must read for everyone in the art world Andrew and Jerry thanks so much for joining us today Andrew over to you thank you very much so so I'm able to enter in chief of art met news and also host of the art angle podcast and it's a pleasure to be with you here today to talk to the great art critic Jerry Saltz about something at least a little bit less depressing than what we're seeing the news day after day the topic art artists of people who won't want to be them and the world they will find themselves in should they succeed there aren't many people who are better equipped to address this topic than Jerry the Pulitzer Prize winning art critic for New York Magazine who you definitely already know he's been in movies he's been a judge on a reality TV show his social-media followings off Charts and now he's just published his fifth book called how to be an artist over here it evolved out of a 2018 New York magazine article of the same name and contains sixty three pieces of practical inspiring and empowering advice for people who for whatever reason wish they were the next time off Clint Kerry James Marshall or god forbid Picasa okay so we're gonna jump into a freewheeling conversation here in the manner of these new zoom things starting with the book and moving on from there at the end we're going to open up the floor to questions from the audience so if you have any just type them into the chat at the bottom of the screen how does that sound to you Jerry it sounds great Andrew and it's really good to see you from where I am in Northwest Connecticut I apologize to everybody for being a bit of a slow talker I'm finding out during lockdown we're about two hours north of New York that's with my wife Roberta Swift who is the best art critic in my opinion and we've been here this is day 55 for us out of New York and we've never made any secret that Roberta had uterine cancer in 2014 and then two recurrences three huge operations she's doing great an immunotherapy which all of you will eventually be on and it's good stuff so you don't have to worry so much but our sheltering in place has a lot of moving parts so while we did not want really to leave New York because we don't have another life just this art and we learned how to make it talk and but we had to come and Roberta first refused so where are you Andrew I have no idea really well I buy some weird coincidence I'm about 20 miles away from you well we should all be Google Earth visiting each other like give your address I've been doing this and swooping on everybody's house and getting totally green-eyed monster jealous if in everyone's life it is nice to be in green at this moment but before we get sidetracked by this crazy weird scenario that we're living through in the world I I just want to talk about your book a little bit because it is really a great read I just read it it's it's diverting it's entertaining it's filled with incredible quotes that I don't know how you've managed to accrue them from all these different sources and it dropped in March right around when the pandemic fit so it's about how to be an artist and a critical piece of information here is that you were actually an artist yourself before you became a critic what kind of art did you make well the embarrassing answer to that is not good enough to keep being an artist or maybe it was good I wrote a whole column article essay about it called my life Andrew as a failed artist and in it I don't want to get into it but I talked about the 10 years that I spent making art now I some of you probably know I have no degrees so I don't know what I'm talking about but and the same demons that live in your mouth live in myma and they would say to me what you were said to you this morning you don't know what you're doing you don't know you're a fake you're not educated you've already said everything you said who cares about what you're saying you have a bad neck you have no hair you know it goes on and on you don't have enough money you don't know how to schmooze and well I behold somebody that's listened to the demons this book how to be an artist is really a note to my younger self Andrew love I wish I could have known then what I learned in the subsequent 30 I'm 69 now so I quit being an artist in my late 20s I can't do math nobody in the art world can that might be 40 50 30 years nobody nobody listening to this knows but it's a note to my former self about what it takes to get through those long days and hard nights dark nights what I learned from every artist every writer like you every work of art I've ever seen and a lot of idiotic quotes like I love that you like some of them that I've used as talismans to get through and keep working and have the one thing that I want everybody here to have which is a life lived in art and that's what the book is for it's not about how to make you a rich or famous artist if you know how to do that write the book I could not write a book called how to be a critic because I don't have the slightest idea how you do that so that's what the book is and it's divided into very short if you can't read this damn book you can't read a book very joint you know one-page goddamned chapters you know sometimes they only go a half a page so really buy the book i this is my sixth book and the total I made from the first five books I just told that this yesterday was a total zero none of us are doing what we do for the money I want all of you to make as much money as possible me too I want the bad the good the bad and the very bad to make money I never begrudge that but as Andrew can tell you writing is not the way to make money the writing is way just to have a life you're not so that's what the book is and I hope you know you'll buy it and get to work you big babies so you mentioned your New York magazine article they called my life as a failed artist which was a terrific article in fact it was one of the Articles that one who your Pulitzer at the same time it's not exactly the best resume line for somebody who's going to write a book on how to be an artist no is there something about being a failed artist that gave you greater insight into what makes a successful artist that's a great question the one thing I think being any kind of artist gave me was a sense of the process itself how much paint weighs what it smells like what it sounds like how those hours of being alone are as opposed to the way you spend your hours as a writer or I do being alone however I would tell all people that go how can somebody that doesn't and this applies to both me and Andrew everybody they say how can you to write about art if you don't make it I would say excuse me would you tell people that have never made wine not to write about wine movie critics have never made a film baseball writers Roger Angell is the Shakespeare at The New Yorker baseball and he's he couldn't play an inning so please chill that is an ancient romantic born only in the early 19th century idiotic mostly male idea so wherever I started answering this I don't know but all I could tell everybody listening to this is I became an art critic by saying I was one after driving a truck for ten years of being completely exiled and don't forget everybody I am Jewish sorry I'm Jewish so I didn't drive eighteen wheelers I don't think Jews are allowed to do that Andrew goldstein over there in an 18-wheeler my CB handle was the Jewish cowboy I would get on and go along partner and no one ever spoke to me but I was so miserable by the end of this ten years of driving to New York or to Florida once a month just miserable as miserable as everybody gets doing the jobs that they don't want to do in the real world where it's very hard and one day I just thought I've got to get back in the art world I really was thinking we've got all the time and I thought well I can't be a dealer because I have no money and I can't add and I don't want to be a curator because I don't want to listen to artists say put it over there because I don't want what you know I'm my own I don't need somebody to you know else to be one anyway I went to all the jobs and I never wrote a word in my life I could barely read I graduated at the bottom of my very large high school class and for some reason I thought being a writer that must be easy which was pretty stupid in New York one of the great things in any large city anybody listening to this one though is when you tell somebody in a large city what you do what do you do and you go mmm I'm an art critic they'll go cool and you are an art critic so then all you have to do is put your ass in the chair and sit down and get to work and that took me another a bunch of years so that's where I'm coming from that's how I landed here and somehow I'm still holding on I don't know how you started I met you when you were a kid after Goldstein you were writing for and now I think defunct newspaper called the New York Observer I think and you interviewed me about a new social me and I had started posting on called Facebook but so we all know nobody does this intentionally we all back into it if you are not an artist well I gotta ask you because you know you've been a very illustrious critic for as long as many of your fans remember you that I don't think you're known primarily as an artist these days but in the book you talk about artists using the pronoun we do you still think of yourself as an artist no no when you say the word and I ask myself if I am that I'll be very honest with you this morning this afternoon I almost want to cry because it was a beautiful physical memory that will never leave my body I have it now at that time spent and you could listen to music Andrew and I can't blast shitty music all day long there I go again I'm not an artist I think of myself how I frame myself to get through the days is something of a never as a writer I never think of that it sounds an art critic is much too exotic for me way I I think of myself as a kind of folk critic or a sister Wendy if any of you are old enough to know this English nun was that did art classes art history classes for television the BBC Bob Ross was a favorite of mine I want art to do what it says it's supposed to do which is be for anyone it's not for everyone but it could be for anyone we just don't know who that is some people will go it's not for me I like racecar driving which is great but anyway that's what I think of myself as that's how I power through every single day so in your first big post pandemic essay titled the last days of the art world you approvingly quoted the painter Peter Saul as saying there are just too many artists too many artists period why do you think the world needs more artists why do you want to send this book out there and and many artists all over the world good really good and a very fair question I think there can never be too many artists I think that everyone is creative the creativity was with us in the caves the creativity is a survival mechanism in fact that Darwin himself said he never said it's survival of the fittest or the strongest a terrible misunderstanding that he spent the whole second part of his life trying to clear up he's said its adaptation of those most ape it's survival by those most were able to adapt and that is what is happening with art right now right now art is exactly in those conditions that it's been made in for over 99% of its lifetime of the last say seventy five thousand years which is under pressure in small spaces in intimate settings people are making things out of themselves people are making art with what's ever at hand people are making things writing whatever in these settings with cooking going on over there the kids are going batshit back there Nana is trying to do the laundry the dog is running in this is exactly how most things have been made when the studio the office the bedroom the kitchen the playroom the temple all of it was one room our art world was beautiful and I helped build that world in 1980s and 90s with millions of other people and all artists did and then we all know that it answered every question with the same two answers it just got an ad Ruth has written about this himself he's talked to people about it scores of times none of this is new the two answers will always get bigger get busier and we did and the art world got bloated if I have a bone to pick with him it's that I have no idea why we cover auction results I always think well I want all artists to make money and those 55 mostly male white artists are doing well and it's the same more or less 55 artists with with new ones thrown in and some old ones disappear that we write on and we write about how much their art costs at a two-day like circus which is fine with me I have no progression but then I always go why is this like in the New York Times fine it's on art net it's in art news it's an art see it's on it's just like everywhere and how did I get here do I think there's too many artists no but I think that art got bloated it lost its ability to adapt in some ways it became like this big production nothing wrong with that but it also got too expensive we're the richest collectors I've ever met most of them can't even afford like a brand-new MFA artists would cost fifty two thousand dollars again no problem with the kid making money he just met her she did a quarter of a million going to a probably phony-baloney program but many of them are great great great and I want all artists if they can to stay up late in art school spot what I was quoting from Saul was more of the spirit of come on people we've got to earn our way we can't just go yeah I'm fifty five thousand dollars and I'm 22 years old or or 72 and doing it uh-huh each one of us has to earn our way every day including Andrew including me every piece I write I think after I got the Pulitzer which was in this room Roberto was 10 feet from me and I get started getting emails on the corner of my computer and they said oh it's her and the first one I saw was from my editor at David at New York Magazine and I wrote it back on congratulations it's congratulations to New York Magazine the night I got the Pulitzer I thought I probably will be able to keep my job for 11 more months the demons don't go away so yes Andrew I'm sorry I told everybody I was a blabbermouth when they asked me is this over yet that are there too many artists no there could be more and I want my book to show that art has been more than what we made it in the last 20 years which was always at 52 inches high in a white clean room always expensive that art is not a noun that it's a verb it makes people pregnant it stops people from getting pregnant the paintings in Sark and sarcophagus is in Egypt we're never meant to be seen by human beings you see like I say they protect armies the Venus of Willendorf which is not this I surmise was made by women these first sculptures as fertility figures right to get pregnant to make sure you could breastfeed whatever that's what art is to me it's magic so you you asked option results and I think that's actually an interesting way to segue a bit because my my from my theory about the value of auction results is that artists are like an organism and you know if you imagine a plant a plant needs carbon dioxide it needs water they need sunlight in order to survive and one form of the sustenance that artists need is obviously is money and in the art world the art market has been incredibly opaque for forever and auctions are the only place where the price is said out loud in a room with lots of other people there so for a long time that was where you could get actual you know visible market data to chart this kind of you know this this nutrient and it's going to artists but now of course we're in this crazy world where where auctions can't take place you can't you can't go into a into a physical sales room and and you know jostle the next to the person you know the person next to you to place your bid it's changing everything it seems that everything is now being questioned and and obviously museums galleries are closed all over America they're starting to reopen in Europe and Asia but I have I want to ask you as an art critic what do you do when there are no shows that you can go and see and critique what's your role okay first about auctions they're not taking place you know I don't buy any of that answer you gave on some level yeah it makes the market more transparent than it normally is like if you go into a mega gallery with the same artists and the same collectors and the same curators at this very tiny tiny sliver of the art world we're reporting over and over 99% of the reporting is on 1% of 1% of 1% of the art world as far as people go and then it's just on numbers I mean can George Kondo who I know he's fine or Rudy Stangl who I love can they really make 225 good paintings a year each one selling for a million and what does it matter and you were talking about well the auctions can't go on so what it doesn't mean anything to anyone listening to this podcast or lecturer talk as far as me and I don't begrudge any of it again cuz they'll go Oh Jerry he's just half-cocked you know it sets a market it doesn't set a market it sets this market at the very very very top and the rest they'll throw you out in two seconds they'll just spit you up and throw you out and who cares frankly look the last line of my piece on zombie formalism in 2014 I said what was obvious to me now and it's absolutely proven when the money goes away so will the ark because collectors the market became so dumb that all it did was the market would buy with other people in the market bought already so if you bought one of these somebody else would I love the mega galleries as much as I like a tiny space out of Bushwick I don't I've never missed the shuttle at these places sometimes I don't even I don't even know what the new pace gallery was exactly when it opened up seven floors of something but everything's being remade as you say but they're just as good it's the smallest fighting for their lives galleries in Bushwick were just as bad and it's our job at art met at New York Magazine to show art and artists the respect of being able to go this is a little off george condo is my favorite artist but 35 paintings last week my withdrawal symptoms of seeing not seen art in the flesh have been severe Roberta and I used to see 20 or 30 shows a week we have no other life like you except you run are great I'd say right now the best online art magazine that's what and I know you have a whole auction side but I've never figured out how the to get into it just fine I tried to go to the art what's it called the art fair of fries last week I couldn't figure it out they gave me a VIP number to go into the fries fair why anyway anyway so I've chosen this time Andrew not to do the beautiful this links of where you can go online to see art and you've done among many many things this month these last two months great things but I begged my editors in New York don't don't use me for that I want to take my work deeper now that sounds pretentious I know this okay and it's probably gotten shallower and stupider but there are weird war balloons in art that I've looked at my whole life and I want to write about those I wrote an essay on Peter gurgles the triumph of death I just finished another one on a Botticelli painting and almost unknown when I wrote this essay called the last days of the art world but it wasn't apocalyptic because the second part of the title was and this is what I want everyone to listen to me it said and maybe the first days too because right now you might be looking at my side of the screen but really you're going to end up looking at that side of the screen that I already built in art world and it was big and it was beautiful and it changed the world it really did the Tate Museum was built by the art world that I used to hang around and with every one of those people and when they were just alcoholic English people there's still that because they're English and the German stayed up later and but all of you are being tasked now to build a new one to dispose in a way of what Andrew was just talking about and it won't be an efficient art world it'll be an eccentric art world it won't be professional you'll be the smelly shamans again and I don't say this romantically the smelly shamans that live on the edge of the village who for some reason the village decides I guess we need whatever they're making because and this is key art has never not been here since the beginning my love's that means it's as necessary as economics philosophy religion psychology you know TV whatever you want to call it we don't understand it and it will only go away when every problem that was invented to solve has been solved it is the most advanced operating system our species has ever developed to examine consciousness the invisible world the visible world the dreamed world to render the three-dimensional world in two dimensions it's batshit adaptable and then it'll disappear so I missing art in the flesh real bad but I'm writing my ass off I've never worked so hard I want to make every second count I'm writing as if I who will probably never gain immunity to this disease because I can't bring it to my wife and so we cannot venture that way I may never set foot in the real world again but I was always so bashful I've never wanted to be I I wanted to get out even while I was in not to quit the art world but to get to participate like this by not even showing up so you talked about how art is infinitely adaptive and and the art world is always adapting to new scenarios obviously right now the scenario that the our world is adapting to is this virtual thing you know just like you and I are now I never even wanted to do a FaceTime call before this whole thing happened because it seemed to me like it was just a gimmicky kind of piece of tech but now now we're naturally talking to each other just like you know Darth Vader and one of his lieutenants communicate from the Death Star crossed like eons of states it's it's um it's kind of remarkable but it sounds like what from what you're saying that you are instead of kind of diving into this you know news of development and innovation that you're instead of looking back into history and looking back into yourself well why why not why not dive into the ooze the news are the is the primordial ooze of all this technological art stuff of online viewing rooms and whatever else is happening I do go to those online viewing rooms but I I think that art like they say is long and that we never understand it it's like never understanding a Mozart Sonata we never understand it and so while I of course I look at contemporary art and get jealous of you know Cecily Brown sold the painting yesterday for five point five million dollars your publication reported so I got to feel the green-eyed monster you know they're rich everybody's bad all that's good I love high school with money which is what our world cocaine so I am looking at all of that I look at all those things online all the time I actually think that just all artists contemporary art to tell you the truth if I wrote about cave paintings and rude that's just as contemporary as me writing about you know a Henry Taylor new painting that he's working on and posting about all art is contemporary because I see it now I actually wonder Andrew I'm not trying to ruin our talk should we ask if people want to ask us questions oh yeah we that would they are questions in in the side and I definitely will get to them I just want a few more minutes sir myself you know you talked about cave paintings and you uh and you talk about you know Botticelli who are they're all dealing with the reality of their time in this profound way have you noticed any art being made now in this strange very very you know new era of the coronavirus that you think is is addressing it an interesting way any kind of surprising or potentially lasting or if it's being made that there is no doubt that the content of this moment is being embedded in your work every person's work alive this is a very rare completely shared molecule that we're all living through you might be painting flowers too or painting stripes or triangles the first to do a triangle or whatever but but I promise you my love's the contact of now we'll end up in your triangle we almost oh it to the dead as the angel of death walks among us close very close and those suffering and about to suffer not to claim for our own work I'm addressing to coronavirus that and that is not what Andrew was saying at all so I think the who've us all to stay humble that way which is a word we're using now today after Anthony found she beat the crap out of Rand Paul you should be more humble screw you you led us into this hell you let impale death right these are masters of war but we must never as the outlaw claim I've got you know I'm addressing you are addressing it just don't say you okay if you do I think I'm addressing it I don't think about it I know when I go shopping for our food now that the world is very different in my mask and I am asking myself if I touch somebody almost is my core team dead did I just ruin something from this bag of green beans that I picked up are you my Angel of Death if 14 days is all good you know all of that is in your work everybody listening to this so just stay safe there's a rich Corona and a poor Corona and we can never forget the five percent of the art world I mean excuse me the art world lives almost in the five percent no matter how poor we all are and we are way down at the bottom and we don't have a seat at the trunk stimulus table and we're never gonna have a seat we're our life if we get to be here working from home and not having to go out every day I know thank God you mentioned the triangle which I probably maybe passed over a couple people but I it's a quote from art world confidential which is one of my favorite world and in your book you have a piece of advice number 41 is quote no you don't need graduate school so considering that art schools which are already very expensive incredibly expensive are evolving into these remote teaching facilities and a lot of people are probably going to start seeing them as not being as critical as before maybe not being really a valid you know use of money especially when 25% of the population in the United States is predicted to become unemployed what what in fact you think the diminishing potential relevance of art schools is going to have on our boy is that a pertinent question too now we all know they became much too expensive tenure is I say this as a geezer it's it's a way that you cannot ever adapt because people like me are given shitty courses to teach because they can't fire us footnote I've never had contract I've never had tenure I don't have a contract in New York magazine I've never had an assistant I never worked with another human being this is not a complaint so we know that schools have gotten way top-heavy in our foot however I want all artists on the other hand to have the experience that comes from that which is very simple and we need schools for this reason we're just going to have to rebuild them people like Andrew will be the president of one or you know the put-upon president where artists must artists are vampires man they have to stay up late just like Andrew does with his people when on his way up to this being the editor-in-chief of the best there is right now you had to stay up late every single night with your goddamn peers eating with them drinking with them sleeping with them be having the biggest fight of your life and then the next morning swearing blood brothers and blood sisters we know this I want art schools to be like that where you spend time together and make a new language we have to have a more fluid teaching thing I don't teach nobody asks me I'm an idiot I'm not an idiot I love my work but you know look at me no they're gonna ask me to teach no so I don't have that job and a lot of the teachers that have them are phenomenal but come on it's not a hundred percent and we gotta changes it's gotta get cheaper and I do want it in person for you when you do go back to school and you kids you will go back to school you already know this and it will be fantastic just don't go broke doing it and never pay back your student loans never never never what the are they gonna do to you throw you in jail no everything's changed man you are pirates you are mutiny on the bounty this goddamn thing just make up the rules if you build it they will come mark me I fail at everything and look what happened to me you can't be a bigger loser than me so so this environment that you talk about with people hang out staying up late you know talking to each other that sounds a lot like the New York art scene you know it's it's a little bit like a free art school in a way because there's so much compacted you know freeze on of creativity excitement around there that this this whole virus is obviously terrible for the New York art scene because it is oh yeah close a lot of businesses it's gonna make livelihoods impossible or much harder but are there any ways in which you think it might be good for the New York arts New York's greatest gift has always been one thing and one thing only which is its density that I could go out Andrew and run into you without having to call you to ask you to meet me and I'm too shy to do that so when I used to meet you in the gallery side being like oh hello how are you good to see you I gotta go but inside I was like I'm so excited I got to talk to him and we compared to dumb ideas and then he went that way and I went this way and that was great New York is now at a disadvantage for the first time everybody listening to this outside of New York I hate you because I'm jealous of you as Andrew mentioned many other countries are gonna open up because they have leaders and tracking programs that estill America we know is a failed state and it's only becoming more of what it already was however in Los Angeles or wherever you are I you're not taking an elevator and the subway to get to the crowded gallery yes we're lucky in New York we're all full all the time but suddenly all these other places are added into the baggage can I get into an elevator again go up to my office on the 41st floor at New York magazine not sure well not sure so what I would tell everybody listening to this open up shitty spaces if you build it they will come I promise you this is a new art world yes maybe there'll be too much reporting again on the same people because they're great I love them I helped build all of that bad wonderful tremendous tremendous world but if you build it they will come and people like Andrew will smell that blood in the water and he will send more and more and more writers making no money but he's not making much either to cover your bad shows and to show you the respect of not only writing what we ended up reading which was all positive criticism all the time unless they were reviewing me I'm the only one that gets negative reviews but I I know I'm annoying I don't mean to be but I am I try to hold that guy back but that's what I'm looking for and I may not live to see it but that's fine with me so there are a couple of great questions I see percolating in the chat but before we get to that I just I want to ask what is a day in the life of Jerry Saltz like right now what is your what do you do when you wake up what do you do during the day when do you when you do your work what do you do at night how do you have you make use of this time alone at home with Roberto I want to write a book that a friend of mine Amy la rocca at New York Magazine mentioned the tiny and I want to write a book called codependent some more where I am so happy being with her all the time I know it's pathetic but I am very happy my days haven't changed much I'm very lucky to live in the 5% right I always work from my life has always been see 20 or 30 shows a week that's gone and then write about them for five or six days from early in the morning to very late at night I have no social life as I wrote recently in a piece I want everyone to read I think it's called eating on an art critics appetites and it's about my whole life of suicides death pandemic food our weird coffee habits that you probably seen I drink real anyway and becoming an art critic I wake up in the morning early and I usually sit right here and I write all day the only difference now is I'm writing on art that I haven't seen and occasionally if I get work blocked three four or five times a day it's really five times an hour but I might go online you know and I have an idea of like oh Picasso he did a geometric thing and I'll find the wrong picture and then I'll save the picture and it turns out that it's like you know it's I don't have time ruining the whole time right then you could look something like that and then I would post that with it's stupid caption and then I don't think about it again till late at night I come back and I read it we don't cook so there's no bread baking here and I'll tell you the one loss I have felt Andrew I have not been able to concentrate on reading that I'm accepting because that world of going away for some reason I'm not doing that I do a lot of politics as people know I'm yelling of screaming people then you know so just keep doing everything you've been doing you know everybody listening to this that what you're modeling right now for yourself it's going to save your life so many times you'll be able to look back at this when the demons speak to you you'll go really well I lived through those 24 months of death everywhere people I know dying of an art world dying of the galleries I loved maybe not opening again but of having the faith in art and knowing like they say art is long and I had a dance but have you lost any any people in your in your circle to this to the virus like most people in the art world I know Maurice Berger very well and he died on March 19th or 20th of the coronavirus a great critic Joshua Tector who he and I fight all the time on Twitter but he had but he's doing fine my one of my god children at it and it's fine I have several God children it's not who you think it is it's cause do you know anybody who died Andrew hmm as a matter of fact I am very lucky to say that outside of our coverage where we've been covering quite a bit it has been mainly secondary really but I hear but you know it's it seems like this is early days maybe into end on a lighter note before handing it over to the questions you mentioned your your coffee cup and your coffee consumption recently you were in the news because you posted a photograph of the back of your truck filled with 18 7-eleven big gulps full of coffee and the comments on these articles are about as venomous and a hatred filled as a romantic what is it about your coffee consumption that drives people so crazy let me answer this quickly so we can take care of some of the questions Roberta and I have streamlined our lives coffee for all people listening to this is some kind of a ritual you've got your way he's got his way we've got ours i buy cups of coffee black coffee decaf and CAF from the deadly or the gas station when we're in Northwest Connecticut I then take them home and you can see pictures of this in this week's New York magazine okay today is May 12 if you want to look at it online it's there and then I bought five of these in 2014 with a metal straw hear it can you hear that it's metal so there's no waste I save every cup look at this as a cup in the cup and I use it for hot water or tea and we make iced coffee and have two or three of these a day and criticism never sleeps babe but boy the whole world went nuts it was on the national news what's wrong with him and I just said the world that I come from people used to drink jelly coffee diner coffee gas station coffee it's very good no waste though nothing is thrown out so on that note I'm gonna go to some more serious and and well-thought-through questions in the chat and this one comes from Tommy he says does this feel like a clean slate for the art world do you think the current market norms slash patterns will go back to usual Thank You Tommy really for the question I think a couple of things after 9/11 and after 2008 but particularly if you're old enough to remember 9/11 everyone knew that we should not become warlike and America of course became more of what it already was after 2008 everybody knew that that art market and all markets had to go and as Andrew has written about a million times brilliantly and his publication in that art market only became more of what it already was I would only beg you all not to forget about the filter of the market and money because I guess you can't when you walk into Larry to gaussians you know Deathstar and see a painting by Picasso how can you forget that MoMA who is the third richest institution in this country can't even afford to do a late Picasso show that the insurance and negotiate has done some of the best shows done in this world enduring this horrendous market but we have got to stop thinking about the market no one is thinking about the market except him and those writers and they wanted transparent yes there's a market but okay that's about 10% of the art world what about the other 90 that's me he's gonna defend it so let him answer I'm gonna I'm gonna go to somebody who's got a question that is more pertinent to the topic of this conversation which comes from Jolla Abner and it begins hello Jerry hey child what would you recommend for somebody hoping to make a slowish transition from one career to one making art is this possible and if so how before I answer Joel I have to go back and when we talk about a clean slate we're Americans we don't do clean slate okay and never wish for anything to die so we may want a clean slate but that means him it means me it probably means you if you're listening that's okay so it's not going to be a clean slate thank God as far as transitioning Joel I transition but we've all transitioned I can only say you have to make the world your graduate school and find the world you're trying to transition into if it's music poetry rock and roll art writing you have to start staying up late every night with your peers it's important to not find geezers like me I'm out of scale for you now there's nothing I can do for you I can pretend so I get to have younger people like you like me and I get to have pictures taken with you and they always go my older friends go how do you know all those young people oh I just do but I don't you must show up I had it on my desk but I keep John Cage's I think it's called ten pieces of advice to young artists and stuff like that John Cage it's written a million years ago but more and more it becomes important show up it's the people he said who show up who start to catch on to things that you're not just a lone vampire feeding on rats Joel I'm more bashful pathologically bashful than you and I had to do it for 25 years I had to swallow every anxiety attack ever eats everything so if Andrew did it with no hair and I did it with no hair this is a nightmare you want to talk about bad neck this is worse you've got you've got more than item Jerry so here's a great question which i think is really well you that you're very welcome to answer which is it comes from Daniella Palin Mario and it says what advice do you have for an artist royal gallery is the future ours the future is everybody's Daniela it's not going to belong to any one group the death star is not going to turn it you know pick laser beams on itself middle tear galleries are gonna fight tooth and nail small ones artists run galleries if you can focus on critics artists collectors etc around your age you will become gods and you will then enter whatever new art world is going on in about the Year 2029 2020 you know 30 31 and all this will be an ancient memory do you remember that after the 1918-19 pandemic it was never written about never spoken about really again till now the Roaring Twenties started understand this rock and roll was born after World War two after the worst suffering etc it doesn't belong to anybody but if you build it you big babies they will come don't aim for him or me get one of his younger critics you know take them to dinner you know they're just as cool as you and just keep your credibility never do anything that you lose that never show an artist that you're not in love with and never to do your sales powder on Andrew goldstein or me it's unbearable okay you question from Lisa waiting didn't hear the man and this is also it's a great question Lisa Layton and the question is in your opinion do art teachers have to be quote unquote practicing artists meaning studio maintaining selling artists a quick answer that sounds good to me you know if if your teacher hates art hates the market hates the art world says it's all up I would say get away from that person as fast as you can with respect and if they can't brave their own demons at least to my age they're not good for you they won't help you brave like Andrew and I've talked about dark nights of 3:15 a.m. every night you think that Roberta and I don't wake up at 4:30 going I'm pretty sure everything I wrote yesterday is bottoming out you know then you have to be up for now we're talking about it or worrying about it then you fall asleep we've been jealous obsessively again then you wake up and you sneak up on your work you bring your coffee or whatever your drug of choice is and you get your ass in the chair like that bad teacher of yours get to work okay thanks Lisa from Mannie pain shishun and now if I if I if I pronounced that properly I'll be shocked but so sorry man you but how do you sir how do you define success for an artist oh man yep this is important especially with talking about the market the way we all good and successes Thayne it's good to have people recognize me I walk down the street people always go are you and I go it's me it's me and we talk about art but that's what I wanted okay but the real definition of success my lungs all of them is one word and it's time it's the time to make your work the phony-baloney jobs that you've had to have truck drivers chauffeurs working in galleries drywall just I picked up golf balls from a driving range okay then you get that job down to four days a week and then you're so crafty as a sneaky artist that you figure out how to work three days a week that's like teaching it's like what he does it's not what I did no he works a lot he's an editor then you have time that's success to me and one more thing all of you babies how many people do you think it takes to have a career I've written about this it takes very few one dealer if you can't pull the wool over one love its eyes I'm sorry I've been doing it at New York magazine it's your job one dealer okay how many collectors do you really think you need I would say max out at four if you're lucky or maybe even five Robert rhymin in that entire generation lived on that many collectors until Sotheby's and happen how many critics one or two your own age the curator would be nice am I forgetting people whatever can you convince 12 people of your crapola work come on I've done it he's done it God knows I I do not know he was going to be huge but I knew he had Drive and when I measure when I meet people add room included when he first interviewed me is he a character and drive and I kept seeing him show up I wasn't welcome in his world maybe as much he wasn't as welcome in mine but that doesn't matter though that's the high school that was cool because I kept seeing him and by the way women and artists of color the doors of the art world were just talking a finally being open to you my guess is the person that I asked is the slate wiped clean one thing that we'll continue to do is being pushing for diversity and I think that that can't be bad and all of you thinking yeah the crappy women artists are getting through or there's crapola Ecuador and painters let me just be honest I think that women and artists of color should be allowed to have be as mediocre as famous male mediocre artists if Shawn Scully can have a chai good know career that he reports on and it's three million dollars for more fuzzy stripes I'm good with that your mediocre stripes are fine and then when you are my age if climate change hasn't made us block all of that art in the basement okay for 500 600 years as we adapt when you're my age you will get the chance and Angela probably will be among these people to sort out the mediocre that woman was bad she's up John Sculley out maybe Hans Hoffman won't be as necessary maybe he will the cannon was being rewritten and you will continue to do that I got to say I'm really happy to hear that I wasn't incredibly annoying I would come up to you in Roberta and in the gallery because I was always so starstruck honestly he would do that and if you can talk to people that are kind of well-known or you admire or you hate without doing your sales pitch or without being a cynical wiseass you can have the whole world and Andrew is a pretty sincere guy this this weird emotion the people put down for 20 years turns out in his case to work again men with no hair that we have a lot of other troubles and he was always like this I was so we had to develop weird personalities okay so as one last question and you you mentioned earlier how you were very politically engaged for a long time your facebook photo was you and Bill Clinton here is a question from Maria Barr rods what do you think will happen with the elections I think we're to beat him like a drum but we can never be satisfied ever in any state I want a 40 state victory if it's possible I think that Trump won the election by seventy seven thousand seven hundred and seventy four votes in four states those people are being persuaded by people you should be listening to then are the never Trump Republicans they know how to tear the out of us and they also then know how to tear the out of Trump and get right at his voters and they're taking care of that seventy seven thousand seven hundred seventy four but this has to be decisive if it isn't that's the end I think and I don't think trumpism is going away at all I think you'll see Don and Ivanka Donald Jr blocked me so did Serb Gorka so did Piers Morgan I have really good people to block to me how I got under their skin yeah we have to really go for it although I'm gonna be honest with you one last thing and I'll stay here for the rest of the day answering questions if you want but I'm scared to go to my polling place on 10th Street where I vote it's packed with old Jews and they can't do anything it usually takes me on an off election about an hour and a half to vote the presidential elections it really I have to be I have to pull people through I told Roberta through all the people on crutches I grab and say don't follow the rules just come with me I hope that's all beat the out of them they paid in blood but not they're wrong a little addendum of my own to that question is what should the art world do what can art what do you think curators can do what can what can the people who are listening to if they want to they want to help somehow me I'm from another world another generation my mom and dad vote for Trump if I'm your age and young I disown him just for five years just until he's gone that's me I pay in blood but my own when it comes to politics I'm not high and mighty I've been an I've made so many mistakes in public online posting with Bill Clinton knowing that he's you know kind of a serial sleeves okay yeah I got to meet him and I wanted to show him my phone because he has charisma so there I was standing with him I too have made a lot of those mistakes but once Trump came down that escalator I think every white man especially older ones really had to hold themselves in check and go wow this this must not be I cannot contribute to this any longer so all you older male painters listening to this we're gonna have to step aside you want me to step aside I hope I can when my time comes well write me questions post them anywhere get them to me I'd love that all of you are listening it means the world to make us on justice alone and isolated in my work as you well I think that's a profound place to end thank you very much Jerry and if anybody this is this is going to be recorded as a video so people can access it afterwards it will also be an episode of the art angle podcast if you prefer to get your news through your ear otherwise thank you very much for joining and and by the book on behalf of the National Arts Club I want to say thanks to Jerry and Andrew hurt you too by Jerry's book and you can find our other upcoming programs at National Arts Club org and search our National Arts Club on social media so thank you everyone for joining us today thank you Mitch thank you Andrew for your great work and thank you National Arts Club it takes a pretty goddamn big village and that's what we all are together and I miss you all more than you can know and please find a way to let us know what we didn't do right and what we might have done okay so we can do it again and we can help each other Thank You National Arts Club and I don't know how to hang up from these damn things so somebody has to go first

Channel: The National Arts Club

Views: 11,523

Keywords: art, jerry saltz, visual arts, national arts club, the national arts club

Id: d5mGXGoxx7c

Length: 74min 48sec (4488 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020