For ‘Flash Art’ magazine
In nearly five years as art critic for the Village Voice, Jerry Saltz has written over 200 essays on art exhibited in New York. A selection of these appears in ‘Seeing Out Loud,’ a book that Saltz calls a ‘core sample’ of art seen in the city. Whether he is musing on the state of the art world or examining exhibitions by artists as diverse as Kai Althoff and Norman Rockwell, Saltz never shies away from making his opinions known.
MK- How did you determine the book’s contents?
JS –I kept most of the one-person reviews, a few of the two persons, and most of the museums. Like a lot of people who make things, I hope I’m getting better not worse, so I put the more recent reviews first. My deepest fantasy is that my work could be like desert island reading, where you could dip in and out over and over.
MK – Your writing is self-aware. Do you think that’s an important part of what criticism should be?
JS – I want subjectivity, subjectivity, more subjectivity. I think that’s all there really is. There is no one rule that says ‘Rubins is great’ or ‘Rubins is not great.’ I think it’s all a matter of taste. I write what I think, but I hope that plugs into a bigger, shared feeling so it’s not just some cockamamie nut, running around going, “Oh I like this; I hate that.” To me an ideal review has an opinion in every sentence – some temperature. I hate it when I don’t know what a critic thinks.
MK – Are you unusual in that respect as a critic?
JS – It’s strange. Only in the art world do people say, “Why write about things if you don’t like them?” You would never say that to a restaurant critic or to a sports writer, “Write about the Mets, but only say they’re good.” I think critics let everyone down, especially artists, when they don’t share a strong opinion one way or the other. Frankly, that’s the situation we’re in, and I think that has to stop.
MK – You’ve written that the critic has no power. Can you explain?
JS – I don’t say this to be a provocateur, but art critics don’t have true power. Theater critics have power; they close shows. Art critics can’t do that (Although I sometimes wish we could). If something I write curtails a sale, I’d like to think that those collectors shouldn’t be buying that work anyway. If a dealer backs off you because of what I write, then something’s really wrong with the dealer.
MK – Do you need an eye to be a critic?
JS – Everyone has an eye, and everyone, I suppose, has a voice, so anyone can be a critic. But only a few people can be good critics. For that I think you do need a good eye. But you also have to write clear, entertaining, jargon free prose; you should never take anything for granted, talk down to the reader, or think you understand everything you see. Art is about experience, not understanding. In a sense, it is beyond words. Of course, that hasn’t stopped me from trying to put what I see into words.