Jerry Saltz

I'm looking for what the artist is trying to say and what he or she is actually saying, what the work reveals about society and the timeless conditions of being alive.

Jerry Saltz (born 19 March 1951) is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for New York magazine.

Quotes

• You can't prove Rembrandt is better than Norman Rockwell - although if you actually do prefer Rockwell, I'd say you were shunning complexity, were secretly conservative, and hadn't really looked at either painter's work. Taste is a blood sport.
  • In: "Has Money Ruined Art?," nymag.com, 2007

• I'm looking for what the artist is trying to say and what he or she is actually saying, what the work reveals about society and the timeless conditions of being alive.
  • In: Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2008. p. 174–75 : Saltz on his approach to criticism

• After 1909, Monet drastically enlarged his brushstrokes, disintegrated his images, and broke through the taming constraints and delicacy of Impressionism for good. Nineteen gnarly paintings, starting in 1909 and carrying through his final seventeen years, finish off the notion that Monet went happily ever after into lily-land.
  • In New York Volume 43, Issues 14-21, New York Magazine Company, 2010, p. 1