Jerry Saltz:
Q&A
VAULT spoke to Jerry Saltz, senior art critic at New York Magazine, about his new instructional book, How to Be an Artist.
Portrait Jerry Saltz
Photo: Celeste Sloman
Thank you Jerry Saltz for your time. Let’s start with a provocative question. Why would anyone WANT to be an artist in 2020? Artists still struggle for recognition and respect and the pandemic has reiterated how insecure it can be as a profession.
Why would one not want to be an artist in 2020? If one is called, compelled, moved or heeding higher powers you can’t not be an artist. Art was made in the concentration camps, in prisons, on death-row. It has been used to cast spells, prevent pregnancy, protect armies. The paintings inside the Egyptian pyramids were never meant to be seen by human eyes; they were for the delectation of the gods of the afterlife. Through it all, art has never not been with us; creativity was with us in the caves. Art is one of the most advanced operating systems our species has ever developed for exploring consciousness, for mapping the seen and unseen world. As you say, artists do ‘struggle’ for things, but art has always been a very ‘insecure profession’. Almost no one becomes an artist because it’s a good business model.
There is much debate at the moment about who can tell a story. I am thinking here of artist Dana Schutz (and her painting of Emmett Till) as an example. How can artists sensitively and ethically make work outside of their social and cultural contexts? Should they?
All is fair in art and love. Nothing is ‘verboten’. Dana Schutz’ painting created a fire storm of pain when it was exhibited in the United States. However, it had been exhibited in Europe and praised. Schutz’ painting entered the long American night of racism. A white person may make art about the Black experience, but that artist should be hyper aware that they might be crossing any number of historical and psychic fault lines. The discussion triggered around Schutz’ painting produced a new level of urgency in the art world. It was a public conversation that was long overdue and will have to be had many times over. The history of colonialism is so horrendous and long that almost any subject matter and medium is connected to it.
Should we forgive artists their transgressions of taste, or for being insensitive? Is taste even relevant anymore?
I think that an artist’s so-called ‘bad taste’ is a powerful tool that can often produce great art. Edward Hopper’s nudes are pretty pervy and awkward; the nudity in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted over by subsequent Popes; Matisse’s work was deemed so ugly that he was called a ‘wild beast’. Many bad people have made good art. I am Jewish and love Wagner who was a virulent anti-Semite. The heart wants what the heart wants. There are ghosts of evil in every work of art ever made.
We live in a time of moral outrage. What happens if you are, god forbid, cancelled? I know from following you that people have tried to cancel you, but you persist! Is it important to take on criticism, especially now that everyone is a critic, or should an artist remain oblivious to the slings and arrows?
I have been called terrible names, often. It hurts. I have pushed back, always trying to be respectful, considerate, attempting to explain what I had been trying to say. However, I take full responsibility should what I write be misunderstood. That is entirely on me. After Trump rode down the escalator in 2015 I realised that America was about to enter a very dark period; that day I decided to ‘shut up and listen’ more, much more. I did not want to contribute to the cosmic pain unleashed on the world. Each of us may only speak our own truth; we must always take our lumps; and finally, we must listen closely to dissenting voices, now more than ever. Through all this we must be humble, fearless, arrogant and never reckless.
I like your thoughts on taking inspiration and copying. As an art history student, I learnt almost solely through reproduction. So, two questions: how important is it to see art in the flesh? And it is perhaps harder than ever to remain immune to influence given the prevalence of social media – for example, how much importance should an artist place on originality?
I loved cave paintings for decades before I saw one in the flesh. I love much that I have only seen in reproductions. I love that we all have the history of the known universe on a mysterious electronic device that fits in our pocket. As far as ‘taking’ from other art, all art comes from other art. All artists ‘steal’. When you see an artist looking very closely at something, with their face as close to a painting as one dog might sniff another dog, what you are seeing is an artist trying to figure out how something was made. The reason they’re doing this is to see if they can use it – or ‘steal’ it. Artists use materials; other art is a material. I have no problem with artists using any material they wish – I only look for how original an artist’s work is. If I look at your work and only think, “Well, they’re just making a de Kooning painting,” or using colour, material, surface, composition like a generic Abstract Expressionist, then that artist looks derivate, silly, stupid, unconscious and unoriginal to me.
You make some salient points about how it is important to not be embarrassed starting out as an artist. How important is it to make mistakes?
I have never not been embarrassed or scared when I have made anything. Embarrassment and doubt are the keys to the House of Creativity. No one gets out of here alive. If you are afraid of being embarrassed or in doubt about what you make, do not become an artist. I am embarrassed and unsure of everything I am saying here! I mean it, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t feel ashamed or stupid about saying it. Think about the horror that first-string Abstract Expressionist Philip Guston must have felt when, in his 50s, he suddenly started painting bulbous Ku Klux Klansmen smoking cigars driving around in convertibles. He got dismissed as a ‘mandarin stumblebum’ by Clement Greenberg, the most powerful critic alive. Guston persisted and these are the most revered of all of his works today. You have to have enough faith in yourself, and enough obstinacy, to brave all the dark nights of fear and embarrassment.
Does making political art make you a better artist? To that end, should art be about something or in response to something? Is it an artist’s moral responsibility to be woke?
I think that Andy Warhol and Donald Judd are among the most revolutionary artists of the 20th century. Neither has overtly ‘political’ subject matter. Yet each changed the way the world looks and the way that we look at the world. It doesn’t get any more insurrectionary, political or incendiary than that. It is essential to always remember that all art was once contemporary art and that in its time it might have freaked people out. Beethoven was heard as noise. The important thing to remember is that the ‘political’ is not confined to subject matter. Art contains multitudes; so does politics.
In that light, should art be challenging? Or can it be easy?
Back to “all art was once being contemporary art,” once upon a time almost everything you’ve ever set eyes on, anything kept by humanity, was challenging, different, new, special, sacred or had a use. Every new medium or tool is a shock and produces challenges – of taste, use, adaptation. Is an all-white painting by Robert Ryman ‘easy’ or ‘challenging’? Is it easy to make but challenging to look at? Or the other way around? Is Jasper Johns’ Flag (1954-55) easy for your parents to look at or challenging? Probably both. Art always dwells in and prospers from paradox – two things being true at once. It is always a Zeno’s paradox. Is art real or not? I think that it’s no more important than religion, philosophy, psychology. Art will only disappear when all of the issues and problems it was invented to address have been adequately and fully addressed. In the meantime, maybe an easy art like a Mozart piece strikes others as difficult. Is The Iliad easy or challenging? Maybe Duchamp strikes people as so easy their three-year-old could have made it; maybe he’s so challenging he scares you. What is ABBA? We should not ask such confining questions about art. We must consider the experience of it on every level.
We have recently had a reassessment of the canon of art history that finally takes into account the wider diaspora. How important is it for an artist, or a critic for that matter, to know their art history?
Before the Angel of Death of Covid-19 walked among us, the canon was being taken apart; it had rotted from its own lies, inconsistencies and fallacies. Fifty-one percent of the population is female; it’s time for that to be reflected in art. Ditto artists of colour, artists from all over. From any period. Of course there will be mediocre art made by, say, a woman that is lauded. So what? We have lauded mediocre art by white male artists for millennia. Over time the mediocre almost always falls by the wayside. When the world begins anew, the dismantling of the canon will rightfully, righteously continue. This is the most thrilling moment in the history of art history. You are the luckiest people in the world, you will have the chance that I once had. You are being tasked with building a whole new art world. I envy you. Get to work!
Jerry Saltz
How to Be an Artist
Published by Hachette
Vivian Maier
Self Portrait, 1955
Jerry Saltz
How to Be an Artist
Published by Hachette
Jerry Saltz is the senior art critic at New York Magazine and its entertainment site Vulture. He is the winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism and a 2019 National Magazine Award. Before joining New York Magazine in 2007, Saltz had been art critic for The Village Voice since 1998, and was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize during his tenure there. A frequent guest lecturer, he has spoken at the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum, and many others, and has appeared at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago and elsewhere.
How to Be an Artist is published by Hachette.
... Subscribe
