Jerry Saltz
Okay, okay, so Jerry Saltz isn’t exactly an artist (unless you count his way with words a tittilating artform), but he is an extremely important figure in art criticism today. Mr. Saltz has been gathering even more attention these days with his Facebook profile, but I thought I’d post a 2008 interview between Saltz and Irving Sandler of the Brooklyn Rail.
(Portrait of Jerry Saltz. Pencil on paper by Phong Bui.)
Here’s just a small portion of the interesting interview:
Irving Sandler (Rail): You arrived in New York in 1980; where did you come from, and what was your earlier situation in art?
Jerry Saltz: I’m from nowhere, which means the suburbs of Chicago. I went to art school in Chicago for a couple of years. I never got a degree—although I was recently given an Honorary Doctorate from the Art Institute of Chicago; I asked them to make me a cardiologist. After dropping out of art school I helped found N.A.M.E. Gallery, an artist-run space in Chicago. I co-curated over seventy-five shows there. Eventually, my artist friends started moving to New York. By 1980, I decided to join them and try to become rich and famous. I was twenty-six at the time, and I thought it was too late already.
Rail: What brought you into criticism?
Saltz: It was an accident. Charlie Parker said: “If you don’t play the saxophone for a year, you get a year better.” He could have added, “If you don’t play it for two years, you might not be a saxophone player.” After two years of not working at all and fretting about it all the time I stopped making art altogether. I haven’t made it since. I miss it. I miss being able to listen to music while writing, working with materials, and the amazing psychic space making art creates. Soon, I became a long distance truck driver; my CB radio name was the Jewish Cowboy. I’d come on and say “Shalom, partner.” While driving trucks I thought about how much I loved art and the art world. I knew I wanted to be part of that world no matter what. I thought writing criticism would be easy, so I decided to become a critic.
Rail: How did you first begin to write?
