Jerry saltz SEEING OUT LOUDER art criticism 2003-2009 isbn 978-155595318-8 book report by craniv boyd

jerry saltz SEEING OUT LOUDER art criticism 2003-2009 isbn 978-155595318-8 book report by craniv boyd

 

From reading Jerry Salz's seeing out louder I find that I am more informed about Jerry Saltz the man, than the art he has view obsessively and regularly for the past thirty years in New York City. This is partially due to the fact of the interview between Saltz and Irving Sandler at the end of the book, rather art world anctictdotes inserted in the lively review that build and image of an auto didact who avoids a close reading of art works so as to chase the fabled demon of analogy looks like this or that in Saltz's case artist X, Y, Z and W in short order. The reviews thematically arranged out of Chronological order are light fares both crunchy and informed yet there is vulnerability present a disposition of neediness to be informed.

 

Saltz makes the reader all to aware of a time when: "he was an artist" or "when he was a truck driver" or " when he was a greenhorn" to write all this is to narrate a caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis as if art, New York's art specifically holds trans formative power, an elixir to remove all trace of the "greenhorn". Saltz is entertaining when he writes of moments of the experience of seeing however to hammer down on being a young man new in town straight from Chicago dropping out of art school and the rest, how he informs us how he came to new York to be rich and famous from the art, is to pound on an obscure nail presenting the reader with the bitter taste of some failed vague naïve dream of youth.  Staying with the art world at any cost is not the same as staying with art at any cost. The passion object in Saltz's vocation is over the course of SEEING OUT LOUDER switch from the art to the scene to the art world. A broader view and diagnosis of the art scene in New York rather than descriptive pathology of discreet viral art practices, so as to make Saltz a General Practitioner home visiting the galleries treating patents with a head cold, rather than a neurosurgeon being handed a scalpel to excise a tumor pressing on the hypo campus.

 

A personal memory that supports the subtle gossip tenor of Jerry Saltz's art criticism from 2003- 2009 is his perception of New York art dealer Paula Cooper as attractive when he was making deliveries to her gallery in his former life as a truck driver. Saltz has his "æsthetical heart" stolen for better or worse back in 2002 by then 28-year-old Thrisha Donnelly when she rode in on a white horse for the debut of her New York art career. She some how now can only preach to the converted she remains for Saltz a "thoroughbred good artist who does not mount good gallery shows." A kind way of phrasing there is not much in the way of art objects to look at, this reminiscing of Donnelly's debut for her exhibition two years later tells more of how Saltz reacts when he sees the name Donnelly, how that invokes the stunning memory of a young equestrian woman in uniform, rendering the review of her current work at hand a some what sentimental stroll down memory lane.

 

The gossip element is at its most brazen when Saltz writes of a bathroom conversation with an unnamed art critic who states "Andrea Fraiser is a W____" how is it that Saltz starts the review of an artists exhibition with a conversation that is inappropriate if not chauvinist, Jerry Saltz then provides the back story of a notorious exhibition Andrea Frasier had at Fredrich Petzel Gallery so as to justify the polemic that Fraiser may or may not have invited with the recent work where she beds an art collector who paid for an art work  recorded on video. The background information eclipses the description of the work he reviews, making his article about the controversy gossip and urban legend surrounding the Andrea Fraiser brand.

 

At times Jerry Saltz writes of artist in immature terms, explaining that Martin Krebber a Köln based German Painter over 50 has "street cred" like some kind of gang member, because he studies with Markus Lupertz and was former assistant to G. Baselitz & M. Kippenberger, then paragraph ends with a string of Teutonic names. To speak of an artist having as having "bulletproof" street respect is to contribute to the myth of artist as renegade or delinquent it precluded and cheapens the efforts of those who paint paintings for a living. 

 

The review of Jim Nutt starts with a flash back to the personal world of 1970's Chicago that Jerry Saltz inhabited, it tells of how he "hated" Jim Nutt's work then because he was obsessed with art forum then and Nutt represented a strong mid western regional figurative painting ignored by the editors of art forum in the 70's.

 

In the course of the interview between Saltz and Sandler, readers are informed that writing is not easy for Saltz, that he self identifies as a loudmouth more of a raw nerve and a folk critic. His lively writings are generous in their broad view of the New York art scene that Jerry likes to call Babylon his commentary is direct and clearly state the biases he has as an autodidact, yet he does more to speak of names in the art field than objects which artists have made. by craniv boyd