Da big boss man Jerry Saltzasaurus Rex has another book coming out, and it’s louder than da first one. Oh god. No, seriously, this event is an obvious must, and will be a celebration of a superbly insightful, down-to-earth, and important critic. From the press release:
Seeing Out Louder
Book Launch Party
Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2009 6-8PM
X-INITATIVE
548 W. 22nd St., NYC
Seeing Out Louder
Art criticism 2003-2009
Jerry Saltz
Seeing Out Louder, the sequel to his acclaimed collection, Seeing Out Loud, Jerry Saltz offers more free-wheeling essays, reasoned reviews, thought-pieces, and screeds about contemporary art and its context. Senior Art Critic at New York Magazine since 2007, and previously at The Village Voice (1998-2007), Saltz is also a two-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, popular teacher and coast-to-coast lecturer.
Saltz surveys the good, the bad, and the very bad in contemporary art. He addresses art objects and the spells they do or don’t cast. He considers the art world as an ever-mutating organism. He singles out mismanaged museums, out-of-control auction houses, misguided artists, the gossip pages of Artforum and the tent-city casinos known as Art Fairs. His tools include an unsparing eye, a deep love of the art world, respect for artists, self-deprecating humor, sweet skepticism, and one of the easiest writing styles in criticism. Tracking the most recent all-out orgy of art and money, Saltz considers its effect on art and asks, “Now that the money is gone, how might art and the art world put their houses in order?” Don’t miss the twists and turns as he sorts out the answers. If Seeing Out Louder has a credo it is, “Art First. All Else Follows.”
Jerry Saltz has been the Senior Art Critic for New York Magazine since 2007. Before that he was Senior Art Critic for The Village Voice for almost ten years, starting in 1998. He is a two-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism (2001 and 2006). Seeing Out Loud, an anthology of his Village Voice columns was published in 2003. A second volume, Seeing Out Louder is to be published by Hard Press Editions in October 2009 and covers his most memorable columns from the Village Voice and New York Magazine from 2003 to the present. Saltz has lectured at Harvard, the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American art, The Boston Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, and many others. He currently teaches at Columbia University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and The School of Visual Arts. He has written for Frieze, Art in America, Parkett, Flash Art, Time Out New York, and many others. In 1995, he was the sole advisor for the Whitney Biennial. He lives in New York City.
The publisher, Hard Press Editions (which publishes some pretty weird monographs), has a free .pdf of Saltz’s succinct, kind of touching, highlight reel of the last 40 years in the New York art world, which NYMag maaaadddee him do for their 40th anniversary. Whatever, I really like NYMag. http://hardpresseditions.com/saltz/pdfs/TheNewYorkCanon40308.pdf
Having gone to the Whitney Studio Party the other night, one passage in particular, about Saltz’s encounter in 1978 with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on Madison Avenue, really resonates with me right now:
“Immediately afterwards, I witnessed the effects of fame when I saw John Lennon and Yoko Ono on Madison Avenue. Dazzled by the sight, I couldn’t stop looking, and fell into step behind them. I ended up following in their wake for about 20 blocks, watching the waves of recognition spread down Madison Avenue, the marvelous shock, the astonishment, the joy. It was like an emotional landslide. People staggered or seemed to buckle as the couple passed. Space distorted, time fell into a trance. The light of forever appeared to glow around them. At that exact moment in that exact place they seemed the sum of all sums. I still feel the reverberations on that particular stretch of upper Madison Avenue. That was old-fashioned fame: God-like, classic, aristocratic, transcendental, almost religious, a strange, strange love. The bigger the crowd of idolaters, the more unique you felt in your idolatry. Fame is not like that anymore. Fame is feral, or simply celebrity squared. Debased or replaced by its more ordinary manifestations (the well-known, the groovy, or the merely recognizable), fame now attaches itself to nobodies. Celebrity is an everyday thing, our biggest export. We’re a nation of Kennedys. You’re famous, maybe, or someone you know is: the chef at the restaurant you go to, your hairdresser, your doctor, architect, interior designer, or florist. You know somebody who knew John Jr., or, as one woman told News Channel 4, “I didn’t know him, but my dog knew his dog.”
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