Jerry Saltz On "How To Be an Artist"

hi everyone I'm Hayden Baggett one of the programmers for the South by Southwest Conference welcome to the South by Southwest sessions online series today I'd like to introduce New York Magazine senior art critic and best-selling author Jerry Saltz who will be in conversation with David Haskell the editor-in-chief of the New York Magazine in this session they will discuss Jerry's new book how to be an artist address the rapidly changing social climate give advice to creatives and explain how the creative process can thrive in the face of adversity and now let's welcome Jerry Saltz and David Haskell Jerry Saltz David Haskell I welcome to this hi David it's great to see you you're doing an insanely great job in New York Mike you're having quite a season of just the most intense living and then also journalism of you know of my life but I'm really happy to take a break here and talk to you I truly am I want to say to this crowd it just by way of introduction I'm the editor of New York Magazine and I have really the honour of publishing Jerry Jerry is an art critic and he has written about his life as what he called a failed artist and we can maybe get into that but I I just want to point out that Jerry is that rare thing a superb critic who is himself also an artist and you know I think it's just like an incredible privilege to be working on Long him as we try to see the world and that's really what I want to talk about here with Jerry I mean we could talk about your life we could talk about your terrific book and we could also talk about our quarantine existence and we could talk about the news of the last week there's so much going on and I do think actually structuring it around your work in art criticism is is really kind of interesting I mean one of the to start I'm just gonna say that I picked up Jerry's book again recently just now and it's beautiful everything and it's called how to be an artist and I thought you know let's open to a random and pay page and see if that helps start the conversation and the number 28 directive was to look hard look openly and so Jerry let me just ask you what are you seeing how do you see right now where are you and what are you seeing well thank you for the introduction David really we're seeing like you alluded to the stories of our lives unfolding in real time outside of our worlds and inside of every one of us time speeded up of change in the offing change that as everyone in this country if not the world knows is becoming a long long time and is now here for most of us it began not I mean the immediate part began 75 85 days ago when all everything we knew seemed to shut down and we were thrown upon ourselves again and then as we were thrown upon ourselves again our selves through upon us to one thing I'm seeing David and I've loved the photos in our magazine is there's a kind of explosion a first-person photography I don't mean artsy fartsy you know smoke and mirrors photography about photography you know up its own but but unbelievable recording and you've been seeing that too I assume yeah well you know in part because there's extraordinary images to make and and some of that comes from the just experience of lockdown and you know that none of us thought was imaginable and then suddenly it is and and to document that is extraordinary but I think I've also seen and I think you're you're alluding to this also very cotillion daily life photography that's incredibly moving how do you think we're all amateur photographers we're all constant photographers people must ask you all the time for advice about your what what should my relationship be to my phone we call it a phone but it's really a camera that sends text messages like I use it as a camera more than anything else how should I be to user you know how to be an artist how like what is the opportunity there this question is so fundamental to what's going on David because if you think about the rise of Trump from say the escalator in 2015 through the first 18 months his rise and Magga was mostly covered by the networks so most of the images that we have are very mediated from very particular points of view framed in special ways usually pretty high-quality but they are from a point of view where I'm afraid that our photographers of the art world and most of the world were taking pictures instead of us of our protest and our resistance and suddenly you have this thing that is held in a different way you can hold it like this like this it's a video camera you're framing in different ways you're seeing from different points of view you're in different places and the photographs are not photographs until they're embedded in social networks so suddenly you have this infrastructure of reciprocity of agency of compassion of comfort or or rage and it's fantastic it's a change in photography that only later I think will be seen that way and I love the people's photography as it were it's tremendous stuff it should be in museum some of them what do you hate about it there might but what do you not want to see another image of don't get overly symbolic never everybody ape the already journalistic like I like the pictures of somebody kneeling in front of a gun doing this but you don't have to take that picture over and over every one of you is creative every one of you has a point of view every one of you may stumble upon like the camera person that had his camera running when the lights in the White House went off like BAM out of nowhere a new genre was born just like that and it's quite extraordinary and also I want to never forget that much of this was triggered by one video after another video after another video right and now so photography had has had a part in this without getting too formal and hearty yeah and let's talk about just the experience of I guess what we've been calling quarantine or self isolation you got a lot of downtime you've got a lot of close proximity some people with those that they truly have chosen but others with just forced proximity to family members and roommates and all that and a lot of anxiety and I wonder and you know oddly your book was published right into all of that and it and it arrives by mail and it says how to be an artist and I bet a lot of people will well this is a good time to explore that question and get some guidance what has been the dialogue that you've been having I mean the other thing I should say is that you are always in conversation with your readers especially on as I see it on Instagram and I'm just curious what the kind of quarantine mood has done to the kind of artistic inclination it's a big question at its most fundamental level David in many many ways everyone listening to this in some way or another is thrown back to the conditions that we our species came from in the caves creativity was there with us Darwin never said it was survival of the fittest or strongest he actually said it was the survival of those most able to adapt now so all the people listening to this are probably making and doing things here and there's kids next to you and there's somebody cooking in the background and na na is back there and the dog just ran in and your partner's on 17 zum meetings and these are the exact conditions that 99.9% of all the things ever made in our culture were made it that is when the studio the office the bedroom the temple the pharmacy the kitchen the nursery they were all one small room and people were making things out of hand or at what what's at hand and smaller probably not in big factory settings I want to give a big shout out to my editors who when this first started they asked me to start doing those great lists of you know shows you can see online or old videos and I asked my editor David Wallace Welles who makes my work anything that's readable if I could instead maybe and this isn't working for other people other people worrying about oh my god is is the subject matter and the content of right now in my work is my work suddenly irrelevant here's what I would say to everybody the content of right now our moment this life right now is in you and so therefore it will be in your work right now is a chance to ask yourself are there things I've been leaving up are there things that I haven't pushed harder on are there weird warbling x' beneath the surface of this material or this idea or an urgency that I've kind of let slide that's what I tried to do as soon as I went into lockdown and I asked my editor I want to write about some art I've been thinking about that's always been in there for me some oddities some beauty ideas of ugliness rage pain and I've been writing harder than I ever can and more in contact with human beings online of course because that's the best way for me to communicate than I ever have so everybody to finish yeah I I would only say question yourself be really honest look hard look long at yourself but don't worry about having to suddenly start drawing pictures of police or Trump you're not you're not illustrators all of that horror and beauty will be in your work if you can find a way to travel maybe we could take a minute about the the most recent long piece you wrote for us that is an extension of this so Jerry word got back to me that Jerry wanted to write at length about his eating habits which somehow might might be a way of writing about quarantine and might be a way of writing about art and his relation to it and also somehow might be a way to write about some of the most formative and traumatic moments of Jerry's life and I really encourage you all to track it down and read it I think it was called my appetites google it Jerry my appetite but but help me it was incredibly elegantly constructed and impressive and all that but it was also very raw and it felt to me like you were pushing yourself to a more emotionally difficult place beyond your kind of professional expertise and yet it was also very much about your relationship to our how do you think people let's talk about how you did that and I'm interested in in like that kind of like the dangers are the difficulties because it that kind of writing and in expression in other art forms can also be maudlin or sloppy or just heartfelt but kind of not come together and where where is that through line in my quarantine all the performative aspects of my particular life were stripped away from the outside I visit 20 to 30 shows a week in New York at galleries and museums I get to be recognized people say mean or nice things to me I live in public that disappeared as soon as I went in private in quarantine with my wife we're a very high risk categories sheets had cancer for six years she's doing great right now but we're still in you know treatment in any event out of nowhere I started get I got an email from David Wallace well sing how are you eating and I noticed nobody else was asked accept me and I haven't made it a secret that my wife and I don't cook I wanted to take this moment and travel both inside of myself and outside and see if I could tell my story of how I got to this quarantine in a way that might relate to everybody's demons speaking to them the formative experiences how I knew I wanted to write it was never get mortal never say you know set it up as a big lesson never try to keep it a little bit funny and be as honest as I possibly could in it and it seemed and using food as I know this makes no sense as a through-line because that's one thing I was doing not cooking all through this and they know walk us through your personal kind of our history Canon when you think of great work that wrestles with demons you know what comes to mind this is really a big question because you could say goriias Saturn devouring his children that's a form of demonic possession and yet it's a form of beauty it's very complex the same way that Francis Bacon might be raging against the anti-homosexuality of the Catholic Church and all churches and all authorities and yet his exploding posts and crazy themes are painted beautifully same with the horrors of Bosch on the other hand you have somebody like Matisse who was making some of the most beautiful images of the early 20th century and what was he called a wild beast a fog my personal Canon has to do with artists expressing really deep personal visions of trying to be as original as possible and having things waiting for me and the work that's always been there and that's what I've been looking for I wrote on the old Rugel painting called the triumph of death and about a coeli painting and what happens to you how does it work that you've seen for years that you've stared at for hours suddenly reveal another layer of itself I mean I get that and have had that experience in other medium but I haven't had it with the painting and that just like viscerally what does that feel like to you what is the revelation wow it hits me like a blast of fresh air like can i remake hamlet for myself so I've now read Hamlet again I haven't but let's just say you're looking at a painting you've seen before and you decide maybe you want to try to remake it and there's something in it that's so potent that you want to look more harder whatever and you kind of created for yourself and then you try to convince everybody else of it I there's no right answer to what's in a van Gogh you know or in a all-black painting by Malevich I think I just give myself permission that's what this book is about it's about saying the minute you try to edit a magazine write a text do a stupid little dance for Instagram post a poem on Twitter do a drawing of you're not because you can see she's you're sitting over there you are going to be embarrassed I promise you I'm embarrassed right now as I'm speaking going I'm not really making any sense and I'm talking to my big big ass editor and now I have to be fired but you've got to take that risk because if you don't now is a time that you are modeling yourself going forward from this moment on every by listening what's going on around you is going to keep happening but yet it'll never happen quite this way again and I want you to model for yourself and get off your asses you big babies get to work even if you're in pain that might be what's in your work or you have to make an enemy of envy as I've written - you have to stop looking at everybody else going they have a better neck they have a better education this one has more money that one's as a better position so what we can't help you right now about that but what you can do is make your work write your letter to the world and so much of what you're saying now and is in your book and also I think is is the is the way in which your eating habits are the perfect metaphor for all of this this this combination of rigor and expression you know you want to be really what you're what you're doing telling me big baby go to work you're being hard on us and then you're also saying don't be hard on yourself open yourself up above all neural and both of those at high intensity seems to be the message of your book but but like hah that's a that's a difficult thing to sort of navigate how do you how do you talk to people who come up to you after a talk like this and say yeah I get it but you don't understand I am really bad like that's nice of you to say but trust me if you saw it you'd look away listen there's never been a worse artist than Jackson Pollock have you ever seen his early drawings they're worse than my drawings even worse than yours I people have no degrees I went to no school I was a Jewish long distance driver I didn't start writing until I was 40 years old I didn't start being an art critic until a working weekly art critic till I was 47 so if you want to see somebody that listen to the same demons that live in your mouth to tell you you're no good well here's what I would say so what you're no good Jackson Pollock Vincent van Gogh another completely self-taught artists they willed themselves to find their own mark and if you think that so let's say I take your advice I will myself and we check in a couple decades later and I'm not mango I'm still not was it worth it yes because the question is did you want to be an artist a creative person for me a person is a success if they're making things how big does your audience really have to be do you want to worldwide Beyonce size audience that's gonna be hard and you have to understand the successful artists that you all focus on but they only account for 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% all the artists I know the 99.9 are really good artists even if they listen you might not be famous or rich but you will have had a life lived in art and for me that's a tremendous success the way you didn't listen to the demons anymore you made your shitty work look at my work I do it online every day and I'm torn a thousand new ones every day and it hurts but you cannot be defined by rejection you have to just keep saying but I'm compelled to do this I have an inner that lives in me I try to keep him at bay and unfortunately sometimes he comes out to but with the bad comes the great so I sneak your truth lie I have some questions that have been asked of each area that I'm starting to scroll through and I see the first one just as a natural extension of what we were talking about so we're gonna start there the question is how do you create when you don't feel excited by it or inspired by it you just create anyway so what about that inspiration question I am NOT the first one that said work comes from work I never want to work ever I just think I'm no good I should just call in every morning and quit but then because I'm a late bloomer I could my gut in the chair and I get to work 99% perspiration 1% inspiration whoever asked this question you will not have an opening for having your ghost occupy you to work through you as dumb inspiration if you're not working you've got to get to work you big babies I love you but that's the way it begins so forget about inspiration that every single second is a new inspiration and then you delete it then you start again until you end up with the last thing that it was and then you hit Send and that's it okay then you go to the next okay here's another question that I am excited to hear you answer in 2020 what makes an artist is it different than it was ten years ago or even during the Renaissance 85% of the art you all see when you go around to art galleries and whatever city you live in it's crap of course you're 85% of crap and mine are different in those same galleries however I would tell you questioner that 85% of the work made in the Renaissance was crap also we just never see it what an artist is we don't know we know it's probably the most advanced operating system that our species has ever developed to explore consciousness the unseen world the seen world the unconscious world and all the problems that it's meant to address when they have all been addressed that's when art will disappear people in the art world were always trying to say the novel is dead the theater is dead the image is dead excuse me we started saying the author was dead as soon as women and artists of color showed up it was like oh you mean we can't make art anymore because we're authors it's always being reinvented questioner being an artist changes all art was once contemporary art as all artists are contemporary artists when they're working it's not that different that you better be working let's to another subject that you have written a lot about over the years which is has to do with the kind of the art market as distinct from art itself so here's the question what is the relationship between art and business and how is the global pandemic and other social issues from the black lives matter movement to climate action going to alter that the art world that we left in America 74 seven days ago in some ways is already gone like so many things in this culture all that happened was all of the fault lines were exposed people started these were things we all knew where the plot lines the fault lines were we answered every question with the same answers which we got bigger or we got busier the answers kept being on every art blog what you would see is coverage over and over of the same 55 fabulously successful mostly white male artists and their amazing prices I have nothing against money I want a good artist to make money bad artists very bad but I will say that none of that honestly looking back and we knew it or I kept writing it had anything to do with the art at all the price of something is irrelevant it's what it's making you think about what it's making you do not and what is making you experience not what it costs look it was hard to go around the art world with that much money staring at you in the face every time and look prices are gonna fall 30 to 50 percent okay I'm guessing we'll lose about that many collectors I'm guessing will lose about that many galleries performing art spaces they're in deep deep going forward it's a bit like I talked about earlier building a different infrastructure of agency of you know comfort of communality instead of all of it getting bigger faster more and traveling to art fairs when is the next time you're gonna see 60 year old collectors getting on plane to plane to plane to plane flying to art fairs or to finish this and why how did we ever end up thinking it was normal for a gallerist to fly to London for the night for an open and yet it became normal and this happened in every single world and that's under change and here's the good news everybody you who are listening to it I may never gain immunity don't tell David Haskell this but it's I don't know that I will ever gain any immunity to come back to society again all of you however are being tasked with the most glorious thing on the face of the earth I once built in our world in the 1990s with about a million other people maybe it was beautiful it was great it was made up of Pirates and losers and people like ne'er do wells complete people like you who had half-mad and no place else to turn and we made a beautiful world that then got back you are being tasked to build a new city and you will let some stay in your sort of memoirist ik mode because I do think there's something exciting about the future looking perhaps like your first years in the in the art world and experiencing art there's a question here I see that is what is the best thing you learn at the Chicago Institute of Art and what did you learn from leaving it I tried to go to the Art Institute of Chicago when I was in my 20s I was once an artist but I let me be an example boys and girls of somebody that listened to the demons that told me you don't know our history like David said yeah but my work is really bad well I listened to all those voices and I was enraged that everybody with more money and taller and better hair or sleeping with more people just like you and I stopped being an artist my little book in a way is a note to my younger self for me trying to tell that person which is all of your stories the things I'd learned since quitting that and all the lessons I've ever learned from all the artists I've ever met and here's I think one of the most important you have to show up my love's I am the most bat you'll never believe this I know I am almost pathologically shy okay I won't pick up the phone if it rings in my house if you want nut so the best thing for you to do is stay up late every night with other vampires whether it's marching or sitting together having the worst fight of your life and then your best friends in the morning when you wake up whatever it takes vampires have to be together to be kind of touching antennae and communing with each other those are the people you're going to take over the world and you must protect each other at all costs that the most important thing my loves that and work work work you've got to show up I know you're shy I know you're scared I know you think you are a loser so what we're all losers on this bus nobody gets out of here alive so all you have to do is show up with your dumb work and you will find other people just like you and you'll take over the world that's the most important thing and making an enemy of envy of stopping looking out and being in the service and everybody else but yourself of seeing what they have that you don't have then then we're gonna have to get it for you here's the question that seems to be quite popular what's the best way to brainstorm remotely how would you answer that I think the minute we go remote your brain is already storming it's already going through things that you won't know sometimes until after the idiot zoom meeting where you suddenly realize I had a good idea and then I let the demon tell me not to do it I've had two of those in the last three weeks in a New York Magazine thing I pitched a meeting right while David Haskell was talking and I got inspired and then I backed off but then I figured out another way to get back in all I could say about these brainstorming when we're in private is just keep doing it you have to be in contact with others of your own kind my love if you are only talking to like if you've made as a lawyer and you're a creative person that's great I hope they're supporting you but you need to be speaking to other people of your own kind or and what to do together whatever you want to do is required I promise you there's no wrong answer I've never I've seen the biggest losers in the art world doing the right things every night it's extraordinary well so you know I think it's interesting this question of communality and relationships but also a very personal private relationship with your own art so so you know is the brainstorm about making group art or is the brainstorm not the right word for the come for the relationships that you're talking about what do you get from other people I am an older person who works alone and yet I can't write if writing is without you I know this that if I'm only as it were cooking for myself and the only one eating my meal all of you are so messed up like all of us listening to this that you need to dance naked in public that you need feedback and so I guess what I'm saying is you have to find a way to be with other people but be your most own true self in your work that is be listening be willing to take criticism from your friends that is worth its weight in platinum like I listen to my editors I never take it personal even though they like my ex out a whole paragraph four five oh my god my genius it's gone I don't have an answer for you other than I keep going back so you've got to just keep showing up be with other people get quiet in yourself and remember each one of us are like little preachers okay we are preaching our little gospel of how to save the world do you want a mega church maybe but most of us are preaching to our own families our own communities our own say gallery of friends my own magazine of my own family of speaking to and learning from each other you will get you can change the world it's so easy the tiniest galleries I've ever seen and the strangest people I've ever known have done little things that made the world look different think about Andy Warhol who didn't even want to paint and he turned the most good-looking by man into the man that silkscreen his work and more just love to watch and he invented a new kind of paintbrush that way you could try that do you so it was Warhol like was he always an artist or did he learn to be an artist were you always an artist do you learn to be an artist the question that I see here is yeah do you feel like you were born to be an artist or had to learn to be an artist and from that question I think is a lot of anxiety like am I just in the wrong south by conversation and I'm actually just not in our decision to be here or is there an opportunity to become something I don't feel confident that I currently am they say that homosexuals and ventriloquist's know what they are when they are very very young okay I think that any if you're in this south by conversation you know something that you've known for a long long time and you're afraid to be an example of it and I would say so what you're afraid so what you might be a bad ventriloquist a bad artist who's judging that I mean for God's sake you can't prove that Vermeer is better than Norman Rockwell it cannot be proved of course if you like Norman Rockwell better see me after the lecture but in any event honor the calling art uses us as a weird weird vehicle to reproduce itself if you just want to draw your dog or you like stripes you will find a way to draw your dog in the way that only you do it so when I look at David's dog drawing I go pretty bad drawing but it's really David I've just called you a great artist to me you're a success your audience might only be of 15 but that's not bad okay here's a question do you have any fears or predictions of censorship yes and yes and it doesn't matter I think I want to tell anybody that's curious by now I am a dying breed meaning weekly critics the right for general interest publications when I started there were thousands if not tens of thousands now there are probably nine in America no one in this entire time has ever said maybe you shouldn't write that negative review Jerry never everybody always thinks well the editors don't allow them that's they will allow you to write what you think if you can kind of not sound like an too much and it's up to the critic as far as censorship goes are there things that I want to say that I don't write I'm sure you know I don't want to do name-calling on people or overdo it on certain artists and will I be censored it's happened and do you know what I always say just listen I just listen when people tell me that this might not have been right after Trump came down the escalator in all honesty I just thought I better shut up and start listening to people and if I'm hurting them I don't want to be part of that infrastructure and what is censorship what does that really mean I'm not let's talk about it also now in the context of censorship of art I mean use moments of intense political pushback and just sort of like righteous fury around [Music] that scares parts of the country parts of New York City what is that you know back to fears and predictions what do you think is most damaging about a situation like that and where do you where the where do your fear thoughts take you more than ever I want to be aware of trying not to step outside of myself and try to represent somebody else is that censorship I think it's just consciousness and this time demands a very particular not a particular a pervasive consciousness and trying not to define somebody else doesn't mean that I as a white critic cannot write out of black artists no it doesn't mean that but it better it does mean that there are certain references certain associations certain histories that I'm it might behoove me to know and not just objected to one lens so going forward we will just continue David I think the project that was really underway during Obama which was the complete rewriting of the Canon which obviously first of all excluded 51% of the population as far as women and then it included excluded all artists for the history of the world of color so it was the most exciting moment in my entire lifetime of art history and criticism as it was being rewritten will that end oh no it's now accelerated and we're all in the balance now this is change it's changing and we're not going back to the other art history it doesn't mean ladies and germs that we're going to throw out Michelangelo and Picasso because Picasso was an okay he was so what I'm sorry if you want to throw them out don't look at his work okay with me I think you're missing something but what does it mean we're throwing out the entire can and it means we're rewriting there's a there's a question that's bubbling up that brings us back to the question of audience how do we get our work seen by those who will find it most meaningful reaching audiences we might not have access to for example and I know that you said it can be dangerous to think about size of audience but I think you're also very good at using that's just let's just use this question to get into Instagram because there is opportunity extraordinary opportunity and and I think you're energized by it of finding you know the artist and the art finding the audience in different ways and what is so electric to you about I mean to explain to the group here Jerry often is using his Instagram account to surface work very current work of art and satire and bringing his audience to that artists work how do you think about that curation all of you have such a tool at your disposal when I started being a critic I knew right away that somehow the old model of the top of the one critic writing down to the many in a pyramid that top-down structure never worked for me I my voice is not authoritative that way I don't think that way I don't live that way with social media about ten years ago less maybe I don't know I suddenly realized that instead of the one speaking to the many you could have the many speak to one another in a comprehensible way to I think that art world became so insular and so secret handshake II and I was lucky to barge my way in as an older person to at least start watching what it looked like even if they didn't want of any piece of this which I don't blame them I've never been asked to write for sort of the art world school newspaper of art form which i think is great I never understand a word in there but I do think it's a great magazine I suddenly realized that out here there's a lot of really good artists and David all I did was make myself a hash tag archaeologist and so if I went to your page and saw a photo I liked and it had the name of the person I might look at that not like it and then find another they go from there to another and then I would post all this took ten seconds all of you should be posting your work online but not just your work you big force and not just plates of food and your dog okay kids are great but no dogs okay anyway host your work your friends work work that interest you bizarre things that you see that weird scene in the backyard I hate to tell you you have David Haskell is a secret great full king photographer I love his pictures I don't even like liking them because I think it looks like kissing up so I would post and then meet the other people and I have an answer to questions that take us through and in recent hashtag archaeology rabbit-hole like how do you do that you wake up and you think hi wonder this would be an interesting hashtag to explore what would you do recently well if I wake up in the morning like this morning I woke up thinking what images that could bring to mind for me George Floyd I knew I did not want to see pictures of him or police beating on him that I didn't want to see something literal and I'm going to show you one that we can't it will be world-famous I started just looking up his name click-click click-click but it took no time at all to end up with this beautiful image by titus Kapoor that will be for Time magazine I guess this week the point I'm trying to say is I might look up medieval torture I love medieval imagery because like our time it was after the Roman Empire and before the hegemony of absolute pure Christianity and before it all blew up and there were a million stories in a million spaces and they went to plague and horrors and I might start there and then and this is making no sense I'm gonna try to cut it off and just keep following the hashtag so they okay they keep following start with me like yeah okay so I've now seen a picture of somebody have being flayed alive okay then I get to Montaigne a great Italian artist and I think God I love Montaigne and I go to his page or a who is Mantegna and then I look at that and I see a weird image and I touched that and all of a sudden it's like a grotto that somebody found in Bulgaria of like a giant like exploding I don't know and that will be my image right there I go wow this kind of grabbed me but more than that I want everybody to know I do this with contemporary art all day so you gigantic terrible losers posting your unbelievably bad art as bad as mine or his it doesn't matter I'm watching and if I like it work just a little I'll click on it maybe I won't crap but then you might have hashtag somebody else I'll follow it there to your friend to your other friend to your friend and then I just post it I think that's such an important discussion of your job or at least how you see your job I think often people think of critics as staring down everything and choosing like narrowing it down to what's best and judgement and it seems like you're you're driven so much by curiosity like what your Instagram feed is just an expression of what grabbed you it's very sort of generative rather than than editing that's the word generative and I have to stand up for everybody out there I used to be on those top 100 powerless in the art world and it was fun and I remember one of them about seven years ago said salts the most popular art critic and that's what I want it to be I never fashioned myself as like the smartest art critic that's not a bat much ink I don't know what that means I want it to be accessible to people do you know sister Wendy was like that or bob ross was - painting a folk critic for everybody but when they wrote on me they said salts maybe the most popular but he risks all authority if he stay if he continues being a critic online and I just thought well of course I'm gonna risk everything to take the risk yeah it's more fun pleasure is an important form of knowledge my love my wife taught me that about art you may think you don't like figurative art or abstract art and all of a sudden you see like some fuzzy rectangles by Mark Rothko and you're crying like a big baby and maybe just get quiet in yourself and say huh two little fuzzy rectangles just made me cry what kind of art makes you cry why make a list of three of its qualities then look at something you don't like make a list of three of its qualities that's all you have to do alright I think we we should call this one the last question because it's kind of a big big one or you could go big with it how do you start an artistic movement you don't it's not possible it's never been done you listen name a movement any movement van Gogh was the most famous artist alive in his lifetime every myth that you know about they go not true every artist in Paris knew every single move this nutty Dutchman who taught himself to draw was doing all the post-impressionists that means go gaen sera van Gogh the artist that you know their names they knew one thing and the word was never used in their lifetime they never heard the word post-impressionist they knew one thing that Impressionism was boring boring boring and that they wanted to make paint even more vibrant or color more intense and not have it be so like Monet he's great but just make your own work find other vampires of your own kind and you will begin without even knowing Matisse went to picasso studio to see a brand-new painting called ley de mussels and I'll finish with this he hated it was Picasso's most famous painting but when he left he caught you said it's very cubistic he's the first person to ever use the trunk don't try to create a movement just make your work creating a movement bad way to think all right Jerry well thank you very much for taking the time and for all of your writing and work and I encourage everybody who's I don't know on I can't imagine you're listening to this and having it ready about the book but if you're on the fence buy the book get the book for your mother-in-law also I bet you like it there's a lot of graduations coming up etc etc but anyway thank you again and and thank you to South by Southwest for hosting us Hayden I'm going to throw it back to you right now thank you very much thank you David thank you South by Southwest [Music] you

Channel: SXSW

Views: 10,591

Rating: 4.7743587 out of 5

Keywords: SXSW, “South By Southwest”, South, By, West, Southby, Southwest, Fest, Festival, Austin, Texas, Conference, Lineup, Keynote, Speaker, Panel, Interview, Music, Film, Movie, Interactive, EDU, Tech, Technology, Gaming, Video Games, Media, Entertainment, News, Business, Training, Creative, Entrepreneur, Development, ACL, CES, TED, Talk, Comic Con, Red Carpet, Live, Performance, Showcase, Concert, TV, Television, 2018, 2019, jerry saltz, how to be an artist

Id: 2VP7j86jqt4

Length: 58min 26sec (3506 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 05 2020