vagina gumtata

.
kind of pathetic to see people getting ridiculously outraged over who was excluded sixty years ago while in the HERE AND NOW fawning over JS, who has written 18 single artist reviews/features on contemporary artists in the past two+ years, with only three of them on women (two on the same woman, abramovic).

marclay, marclay, baldessari, colen, abramovic, dumas, abramovic, powhida, tillmans, sehgal, orozco, koons, richter, fischer, riley, ray, abdessemed, kawara

and guess what i take full credit for the dumas review even happening.

fuuuck

.
Jesus... four weeks with four reviews of his own shitty Bravo show. Is this going to continue for another month? It's worse than the three-in-one-week Defense of the New Museum articles, before that mess even opened.

JS facebook page henceforth to be referred to as 'Jerry Saltz's mirror lick'... thank Paul H-O for that one.

self referential

.
haha -

at age 58, it was fashionable to think of him as an over-the-hill embarrassment. And although he had become a weirdo celebrity—a guy who loved making movies, appearing on TV, and being a walking photo op....

i got not mentioned again

.
hey i got not mentioned by JS in NYMag... again.

It's in the new Marlene Dumas review where he says - "I’ve been accused of being part of a "circle jerk" anti-Dumas cabal. A 2008 New York Times Magazine profile included a quote that called disapproving male critics (including me) part of “a sexist conspiracy.”". The circle-jerk mention is me from this post from five(!) years ago.

The other unnamed person he quoted above - from the NYTimes profile - is Nicole Eisenmann, who coincidentally is the person who comments as Corny after the old 'circle-jerk' post. I don't think I'm betraying any confidence saying that.. there was an article mentioning her blog at some point later.

Actually, I was quoted but not named in that NYTimes profile as well. Kind of cool(?), this stealth bibliography? This is like the third time I've been in NYMag but not. My previous unmention by JS in NYMag is here.

I'm glad he finally wrote a review of this artist he has been trashing for seventeen years. Too bad he couldn't do it without portraying himself as a victim. I looked at his Facebook thread on this review and it is beyond ironic that it goes on for 250 comments mostly hostile toward Dumas and then they suddenly switch to honoring JS for his ability to put up with on-line criticism.

Well anyways congrats to both me and JS because I gave him shit about not reviewing the Dumas show at MoMA (which got me 'defriended') and also for getting beat with two dead women by Schjeldahl haha and now he has finally written a Dumas review and has already reviewed two live women this year wow!

Schjeldahl Beats Saltz by Two Dead Women

.
Nice article, except...

"I, for one, would rather see a tightly organized overview of Mr. Zucker’s work than Marlene Dumas’s warmed-over Expressionism, which was recently displayed in bulk at the Museum of Modern Art"

Strange sour note in an article that otherwise didn't have a bad thing to say about a single artist, and a lot of artists were named. What is up with them and Dumas? To borrow one of JS's shopworn phrases, it's as if she is living rent-free in their brains. Weird.

Schjeldahl Beats Saltz With Two Dead Women

I don't get how JS keeps up this appearance of being a champion of women. How many reviews dedicated to the solo show of a woman has he written in the past YEAR? One.... and it was Georgia O'Keefe. Talk about shut up or nut up. Even Schjeldahl, who also didn't review the solo show of a living woman in the past year, beat JS by two dead women.

The last show of a living female artist JS has dedicated a full review to was Pipilotti Rist at MoMA, published 12/28/08. What year is it now? Oh yeah, 2010.

Yes, it's 2010 now. 2009 was spent on Facebook calling out MoMA. I'm half-expecting the upcoming JS Whitney Biennial review to be half-about the half-representation of women... and fully expecting his Facebook commenters to give him 87 'Like's and 470 You Did It Jer!s.



Think how much more effective it might have been for them to write an open letter to Roberta Smith instead of Ann Temkin. Hah! Since 2/20/09, Roberta has written fifty-four 'Art in Review' pieces devoted to solo shows, with fifteen of those on women artists. In the past FIVE MONTHS there have been twenty-four such reviews... with only FOUR of them on the work of female artists. It's a groaner that none of those Facebook people says anything.

Herbert Vogel on the Cedar Bar, from the Herb and Dorothy documentary - "The Cedar Tavern was an extraordinary place for the artists to let their knowledge and anger out at the same time". It'd be nice if some old Cedar Bar regular would get on that Facebook page and go Lloyd Bentsen on it.

RELATED: eageageag on Yau and Saltz.

Favorites '09

.
'Pop-up'/DIY/artist-driven shows and spaces. Many of these shows were one-night only, or in gallery spaces which the artist-organizers created from extra live/work space -

*106 Green - one-month shows open on Sundays and by appointment in a space run by artist Mitchell Wright. I saw Whitey on the Moon, curated by Kanishka Raja.
*Apartment Show - one night shows, mostly in empty apartments between tenants, organized by artists Denise Kupferschmidt and Joshua Smith. Are these all archived somewhere? I went to Apartment Show XOXO, Apartment Show at Artist's Space, and Real Love Apartment Show.
*Daily Operation - one night shows curated by The Old Gold's Jon Lutz... I saw last year's outdoor sculpture show in a park (co-curated by Matthew Fisher) and Patrick Brennan's FAZES... most of the recent ones have been in the same borrowed space, ClIcK on the individual shows to see installation pictures and what you are missing. Many shared artists and friends between the Apartment Show and Daily Operation gangs.
*EXHIBITION - this was a months-long, multi-artist, ungoogleable and practically anonymous continusly-evolving installation in a an empty storefront that I just happened to stumble upon. It's over now and I never read anything about it anywhere else. Don't know what they are doing next or even who it was.
*HKJB - one-week shows organized by Benjamin King and Jay Henderson. I saw Bad Graphic Design.
*Real Fine Arts - okay this is an actual dedicated gallery space, but run by artists living in the back, only open on the weekends when they are free from their day-jobs or otherwise available. I saw Sam Pulitzer.
*The Sum and All Parts was a one-month show in a temporary gallery space curated by Jenny Borland and Beau Rutland. Listened to Leroy Stevens scream album.
*Use Your Illusion was what looked like (i missed it) an excellent one-week show in the back of a Bushiwck bodega, curated by artist Jesse Hamerman. Don't know if there is a website or if he has done any others, but the space is wicked.
* there is another ongoing one but I can't remember enough to find it... a basement space... where is that? what is it called? they had a group anonymous show recently.

TOP FAVORITE SHOWS
Joanne Greenbaum at D'Amelio Terras
Luca Buvoli at Susan Inglett
Sarah Braman at the Armory
Manzoni show
Apartment Show XOXO - LEGENDARY!
Small A Projects Upstate show

ONE MILLION PAGE VIEWS
anaba broke the one million page view mark... damn! not bad for an artblog... what other artblogs have had a million page views? definitely Tyler Green and Ed Winkleman, probably Fallon and Rosof(?)... I'm not sure if even AFC has it yet (she started a little later). UPDATE: oh wow AFC has it... she's had a million page views in the past six months(!).

FIRST (or Early) NYC-area SOLO SHOWs I WAS GLAD TO SEE -
Martha Friedman
Ida Ekblad
Josh Blackwell
Jonathan Van Dyke
EJ Hauser - at Pluto (not solo but many paintings), and at John Davis.
Jane Benson
Patrick Brennan
Barb Choit
Erin Shireff
David Kennedy Cutler
Jonathan Delachaux and Lizzie Fitch - okay, it was a 2-person show.


Joanne Greenbaum in Cave Painting 2.

MORE Favorite ARTISTs/work of 2009
Lance Rautzhan
Melissa Meyer
Deniz Ozuygur
Nicole Eisenman - at the Tang, and at Leo Koenig.
Ethan Greenbaum - in Abstractions and Contractions and Fresh Asphalt.. but missed his solo show.
Agathe Snow - at Canada, and at the Armory.
Arnold Weschler
Linda Francis - great interview with her.
Cosbe
Loren Munk
Stacy Fisher
Jeffrey Tranchell - in HKJB's Bad Graphic Design and Apartment Show XOXO.
Ivin Ballen - in Abstractions and Contractions, at Pulse with Winkleman, in Blackston show... unfortunately never got to his solo show at Winkleman, but Kai said it was fantastic and took some great pictures.
Patrick Brennan - in The Object Direct (at Heskin, curated by Matthew Fisher), in Apartment Show at Artist's Space, Solo Show with Daily Operation.
Joe Fyfe - and here
William Powhida - his Brooklyn Rail piece.
Joanne Greenbaum - at her studio, at D'Amelio Terras, in Cave Painting 2.
Rosanna Bruno - at Pluto and at John Davis.
Lauren Luloff
Keltie Ferris - these photos are mostly from 2008, but I am all-on-board now.
Sarah Braman - in Apartment Show at Artist's Space, at Museum 52 with Joe Bradley, at Armory Show with Museum 52, in Apartment Show XOXO, at Small A Projects show in Greenwich.
...i keep thinking of artists but i have to stop because i am just re-posting my whole blog.

WORST '09
Jerry Saltz. this isn't a popular position but it just got worse and worse for me...
* slammed Marlene Dumas for years, not in reviews but in sideswipes, and when she had a solo show at MoMA all he could manage was a spiteful Facebook note.
* i added Saltz on Facebook because I'd heard he'd written that note about Dumas and wanted to read it. I quoted it critically and was immediately 'de-friended'... guess you can read his facebook criticism as long as you do not disagree publicly? this is where he really lost me, with trying to control who can see what he writes AND punishing dissenters.
* Bravo show... it might be good, but I doubt it. Samantha Mathis and Kyra Sedgwick? Someone told me that Jerry wants to be the new Tim Gunn. i wish it would just happen already and he can move on.
* feminist crusade -sorry, it's creeeepy
* 'challenging' Glenn Beck to curate two shows with the promise to "secure a first-rate New York venue for each exhibition" and to write about each show in NYMagazine. WOW. Thankfully that never happened. Glenn Beck's producers are pretty good at sniffing out the fame-whores. Sorry, Jer!
* three defense of New Museum articles in a week, the last one a ridiculous deflection.
* suddenly this month his Facebook wall has become visible, not sure if it is intentional or if he missed adjusting the privacy settings. Jeez I had been pissed I was missing something.... shouldn't have worried... my prophets, my children of Thebes, my darlings. BARF! No surprise after my January de-friending to see that almost all the comments are adulatory, from the same few hundred or so 'friends'... I'm assuming his remaining 4,400 'friends' are reading along thinking WTF? and wisely keeping silent.
(this will be edited later)

RELATED: Favorites '08, Fantastic Four 'o7, more '07 faves, Worst Art Things 2004.

NM

.
John Haber on New Museum controversy.

"The museum is doing a fascinating project" argues Jeffrey Deitch. Deitch is also curator of the Joannu collection.

Deitch employee (and artist) Kathy Grayson requests "a little respect for the inderdisciplinarity we all celebrate", lauding Jannou's brilliance and the "obvious coolness of the most important artist of the last few decades doing a curatorial project".

"If Louis XIV was alive today he'd own a Jeff Koons balloon dog" - Hrag Vartanian.

----------------------

Jerry Saltz vs. People Who Know What They Are Talking About:

"It is a joke, by the way, to think that Joannou’s collection will increase in value after being shown here. If anything, using three floors of the New Museum will overexpose the art and decrease its value" – Jerry Saltz, NYMag, 11/11

"It is also extremely questionable to say that showing art in a museum increases its value" - Jerry Saltz, NYMag, 11/16

“Showing at a museum gives credence to the works a collector has assembled and does add value to the asset” - John Arena, senior vice president in custom credit at U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, NYTimes, 11/10

“(A museum) is not supposed to surrender itself to a trustee and donor whose collection stands to be enhanced in value by a major museum show.” – Noah Kupferman, Private Client Manager at US Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, former specialist at Sotheby’s, currently teaches a course called Fine Art as a Financial Asset at New York University, NYTimes, 11/10.

gassy

.
Jerry Saltz on New Museum for NYMag 1, 11/11/09
Jerry Saltz on New Museum for NYMag 2, 11/15/09
Jerry Saltz on New Museum for NYMag 3, 11/16/09
+ tons of comments


the advertising is a gas.

Jerry Saltz on Marlene Dumas at MoMA

.
"MoMA's dreary Marlene Dumas show establishes that she is a sensationalist with no original ideas about painting, color, or photography; she hasn't developed as an artist; is merely a later day Neo-Expresionist; is more connected to Andreas Serrano than to any painter." - Jerry Saltz on Marlene Dumas, on Facebook, 1/3/09.

WOW! That's it?? A facebook note after fifteen years of random sideswipes? Dude, she has a solo show on your home turf, at the freaking MoMA... this was really put-up or shut-up time.

Some great comments in response to the note -

"Well, Jerry, I have noticed that you've been complaining about her for years, is there a full review underway? If not it's time to let go of this thing with her..." - Joe Fyfe

"It appears you're simply writing "dreary" to avoid dealing with Dark." - Joy Garnett

"I find it fascinating how uniformly critics and New Yorkers (yeah, and me) have hated this show, even Peter Schjeldahl, who I'd have guesed would have found the personality to his liking" - John Haber

John Haber is wrong... Peter Schjeldahl reviewed the show positively. Roberta Smith did not hate the show either.

"I'm gratified that so many people I like to read are so uniform in dumping on this utter garbage and leave it at that" - John Haber... I mean John Hater!! haha.

Charlie Finch dumps, and even uses the word "retarded" to describe the show, apparently trying to glom some of the attention Chris Sharp got for his Joe Bradley review.

Marlene Dumas Tally Reaches Fever Pitch

Someone left an anonymous comment yesterday morning (thanks!) noting that anaba is mentioned in this week's NYTimes Magazine... a Deborah Solomon profile of Marlene Dumas -

"An art-world blog, Anaba, has taken to listing the names of Dumas’s supporters and detractors as if they were superdelegates charged with putting an artist into office. Are you pro-Dumas or anti-Dumas? “All of the anti-Dumasers are men,” the blog noted in 2005, in a reference to a group of influential critics that includes Jerry Saltz, the art critic for New York magazine, who has described Dumas’s work as 'flat-footed'."

Also noted in my posts, along with the gender split, is that most of those quoted who don't like Dumas are not artists. I'm not sure which posts Deborah Solomon read, but here are the most relevant -

1/5/06 - My ongoing monitoring of the critical response to the work of Marlene Dumas
10/30/05 - The Dumas Report
6/17/05 - Carol Vogel and Sarah Milroy come out for Marlene Dumas
6/1/05 - Jerry Saltz still doesn't like Marlene Dumas
5/12/05 - Marlene Dumas - 1994
5/11/05 - Richard Polsky really hates Marlene Dumas
3/28/05 - Marlene Dumas!

CURRENT TALLY -

PRO-DUMAS: Svetlana Alpers, Chris Ashley, David Cohen, Nicole Davis, Nicole Eisenman (in comments), Joy Garnett, Cynthia King (in comments) Sarah Milroy, George Rodart (in comments), Barry Schwabsky, Adrian Searle, Elisabeth Sussman, Richard Vine, Carol Vogel.

ANTI-DUMAS: Franklin Einspruch (in comments, and on his blog), Charlie Finch, Tyler Green, Jerry Saltz, Richard Polsky, Peter Schjeldahl.

Jerry Saltz has been consistent, but it has always been in throwaway lines, never an actual review, so I'm looking forward to reading his inevitable review of the upcoming MoMA show. I say inevitable because after that much glib dismissal he is going to have to put up or shut up. Hopefully Roberta Smith will also review that show.


Howard Dean and my mother are counting the superdelegate votes as they come in... I'm told a final decision will be reached in about a hundred years.

UPDATE: votes are poring in!
pro - Eva Lake, Amie Oliver

Urs Fischer/Christopher Wiedeman.... PLUS

Today's NYMagazine Urs Fischer review makes me want to re-post images of Christopher Wiedeman's piece from last year, in Richmond (scroll down).


Christopher dug a deep pit, through a concrete floor, inside a small cinderblock building. A narrow ante-chamber on a raised platform was constructed from plywood, around the corner of which the plywood flooring becomes a curved ramp directing your eye and body toward the black hole.

The NYMag review, by Jerry Saltz, refers to Fischer's piece as "a Herculean project". It looks cool... but with a backhoe, a $250,000 budget, and a team of assistants.... whatever. Herculean it isn't. Chris did everything by himself, it was a fantastic piece.


Chris building entry, stage, and ramp.


Chris digging pit.

RELATED: Christopher doesn't have any website that I can find.... but you can see another one of his installations here, documented by Michael Lease. MORE: a video.

PLUS: JERRY SALTZ DATA REPORT

I am a guy, so I can point and laugh at Jerry Saltz writing yet another feature decrying gender disparity followed by yet another review of a male artist. Jerry has written twenty-six reviews of individual artists so far this year, only seven of which have been reviews of women artists.

MoMA is a museum, and it's asking a lot to go back and revise history, unfair as it may be, but Jerry is writing new history NOW. If I were a girl I guess I would have no option but to put on a gorilla mask and wheatpaste a poster somewhere. I don't think you can expect much more than 25% representation anytime soon, if Jerry is supposedly your champion.

RELATED: Art Candy hasn't been updated yet, so it still stands at 59 men to 16 women.

three follow-ups

.
- Jerry Saltz has written something in response to my post a couple weeks ago. I guess he did get yelled at.

"Two weeks ago, a blogger noted that in my article ‘Has Money Ruined Art?’ (October 15), I was guilty of using many of the same ideas, lines, and quotes that I have used in previous articles. The blogger called this ‘very lazy’; actually, he/she also called me ‘an undead zombie.'"

What is up with the use of "he/she"? He knows darn well I'm a man. Did our studio visit mean nothing???

Felt a little bit bad about that thing he had to write... but then I remembered that he has no problem gratuitously dumping on Dumas (without ever actually reviewing her), the stupid thing he wrote about Moti Hasson, all the Columbia crap... so, whatever.

- Spoke with Hudson about the products on display at Feature. Hudson first noticed Gentle Wind products in the homes of friends across the country in the 90's , and then "got into it a little" himself.

The products on display are not for sale through the gallery. Hudson is the one who did the Q&A with the Gentle Wind founder.

"I think they're more interesting than a lot of art" - Hudson. Okay, Hudson, over and out.

- Geoff Edgers article on B. in the Boston Globe. The photo of B. in the slide show is handsomer than the other photos I've seen.

RELATED: message from the Attorney General of Maine.

moratorium

Okay, I haven't seen a Jerry Saltz write-up in a couple weeks, this might be a good time to make a request.

A few years ago Jerry called for a four-year moratorium on photography-based painting. I would like to call for a six-month moratorium on Jerry Saltz writing about the art market, including even writing the word "market". Also, any use of the words "biennial" and "fair" (unless he is writing specifically about work seen at a biennial or fair). Oh, and a moratorium on use of the word "sexy". I'm tired of it.

Can we make a petition? Will you sign it?

UPDATE 10/10/07 - ugh, he really blew it.

art critic as tool

From Jerry Saltz's latest thing on Artnet -

"For a little more than two years, Moti Hasson Gallery has operated out of a boxy second-floor space in a nondescript building at the fringes of the Chelsea art world, on West 38th Street. Despite mounting good shows, the gallery stayed under the art world’s radar. Now, like other galleries that have had to come to terms with the primacy of the New York art world’s herd-instinct, the gallery has moved into a slick ground-floor space in the belly of the Chelsea beast on West 25th Street. If "Beyond the Pale," the gallery’s inaugural exhibition here, is any gauge, the fringe’s loss is Chelsea’s gain."

So... what is he saying? That he knew of this space when it was on "the fringes" (way up on 38th Street), and knew that they were "mounting good shows"... but didn't want to write anything about them until AFTER they had followed the herd into a slick space in the belly of the beast, so he could make some sort of obvious criticism of it all? I mean, did he ever write about any of these good shows in the two years previous? No.

What is the lesson imparted here?

It's like the review of the Greater NY show, in which he admits that having 31 Columbia graduates and current students in the exhibition of 162 artists feels fishy, yet includes seven of those Columbia students in the nineteen exhibiting artists whose work he chooses to single out. Yes, he teaches at Columbia, those were his students.

It's annoying.

RELATED: it is also like Roberta Smith's review of Swoon at Deitch... in which she talks about seeing Swoon's stuff on the street all around for a couple years, how good it is... but doesn't mention it until reviewing the Deitch show? Why?

Jerry Saltz Studio Visit Report

Last week at Art Basel: Stuffy's, after overcoming my starstruckedness, I found the courage to invite Jerry Saltz to my studio. He graciously accepted!!


That is Libby in that painting he's studying! Jerry said he never misses a day checking Libby and Roberta's blog... and that "they are fantastic artists blazing new trails".

I totally agree!!!

I showed him all my friend's work, and he loved it all!


It looks like he is smiling here, doesn't it? Maybe the hint of a smile? I think he must like that painting -

but when I asked him what he thought... SILENCE.


Stare down.


Okay... I blinked. He got up on tip-toes, though. Very aggressive.


Seduced. Shalom, partner.


Oh Jerry, I don't care if you don't like Marlene Dumas.

Jerry Saltz at Art Basel: Stuffy's!!!

Jerry Saltz visited Art Basel: Stuffy's!!! I'm so lucky that I happened to go to Stuffy's for a meatball sandwich and recognized him! What are the odds?

I wonder if this art fair will get on Artnet??? He seemed to take a lot of notes.


Jerry Saltz reading Michael Lease's obituary.


Jerry Saltz with work by Don Crow, Scott Eastwood, me, and Paul DiPasquale.

Sorry for all the bad cropping and angles, I was trying to be inconspicuous.


He looked at Barbara Tisserat's piece for a long time. I could hear him softly whispering.. "hello my lovelies, my pretties"... it was a little creepy.


AAARRGHH!!! He walked right by my painting! This is the SECOND TIME he has done this! Bastard!! He did the same thing last year at Scope Miami, when I was sitting out front with a bunch of paintings. I can't get a break.


Admiring one of Rachel Hayes' two pieces.


Studying one of Timothy Sean Johnston's paintings. He kept that same expression throughout the entire show, he is THAT intense. I guess maybe that is his poker-face?

I couldn't figure out what he was thinking AT ALL.

Saltz lecture tomorrow...UPDATED: post-lecture

Jerry Saltz is lecturing at 4:30 tomorrow (10/4), at VCU. University Student Commons Theater, 907 Floyd Ave.

Jerry still doesn't like Marlene Dumas.

UPDATE 10/04/06: he said he was going to lecture on content- which i wish he would have - but instead he did a general talk about being an artist, how to be an artist, stuff like that. he was very entertaining and charismatic, funny, self-deprecating, a total ham.

...talked a lot about the artist's obligation to be in the public, get seen somehow; fame. the need to be in cities. i'm pretty he sure he reads artblogs.

...he said he was almost fired a few weeks ago? the paper changed ownership? his own precariousness... and temporary-ness in the scheme of things. he thinks joan acocella is a great critic.

...about how a pollock drip painting endures, how it "gives off more energy than it took to make", and how pollock was a terrible artist who willed himself to be good.

...talked about the triple candie's david hammons and cady noland shows. very not into it, nor into triple candy's current show entitled "the trouble with triple candie". said they should just call it "the trouble with our genitals", or something like that. interesting how dismissive he was, but also interesting that it is on his mind so much and bugging him. i think those remarks about triple candie were fairly off-the-cuff.. unintentionally revealing.

...said that he is the first and last matthew barney fan (meaning he is still a fan, the only one). remembered first seeing a barney climbing/vaseline video in a group show around 1990, and being struck.. calling his wife over. she looked at it for a minute or two, said "guy stuff", and walked away.

... said john ravenal's artificial light show at vcu's anderson gallery includes two artists he had never heard of, one of whom he really liked... but never got around to saying who.

is he going to write about the show? i hope so and i hope not... so because it is a good show and deserves coverage, not because i don't like the idea of critics writing about shows they are paid to visit. it isn't like he paid his own way down here, and did the vcu studio visits and lectures for free, right? it becomes too much like paid pr. i have covered all this before... maybe if he includes it in a write-up of other richmond art things, okay.

RELATED: Joe Fyfe on the Triple Candie show

also... I had put this link up originally, with the Marlene Dumas link, but took it down because it seemed so confrontational and i have been trying to be nicer and in control... but i will put it back up for his own good, because he had so much to say about the perils of navel-gazing.

WHAT DID YOU THINK?

i take the bait

"Our colleague Jerry Saltz who teaches at Columbia has also dropped by Natalie’s studio"

Jerry Saltz had thirty-two articles published on Artnet between 12/2004 and 12/2005, sixteen of which were individual artist features. Eight of those were of NYC artists, three of whom are Columbia graduates, one of whom (until very recently anyway) is faculty.

Jerry knows which side his bread is buttered on. The features mentioned above focus on single artists, but there are plenty of two or more artist articles with an inordinate number of favorable Columbia mentions. Here is a 12/7 feature on Columbia professor Jon Kessler. Here is a 11/10 article on recent graduate Laleh Khorramian, sandwiched between two articles on European men. The Khorramian article notes that "Khorramian has yet to master the art of melding sound and image (something her Columbia colleague Mika Rottenberg excels at)".

The funniest example is probably the review of the Greater NY show, in which he admits that having 31 Columbia graduates and current students in the exhibition of 162 artists feels fishy, yet includes seven of those Columbia students among the nineteen artists he chooses to name. Six of those Columbia artists are described as "excellent", with the seventh, Tamy Ben-Tor's video, deemed "one of the strongest pieces in the show". The non-Columbia artists mentioned are variously described as "rowdy artists turned tidy", "left to die in hallways", and "intriguing", followed by a parenthetical listing of twelve women artists cited as examples of some of the better artists in the show. Four of the seven photos of artwork (from a show of one hundred sixty-two artists) accompanying the article are the work of the Columbia-affiliated artists.

Oh, only FOUR of those sixteen consecutive individual artists featured were women. Does anybody not notice Jerry's propensity to pay lip-service to a problem (like the absence of women, or the hyping of youth and the market) but then continue to write as if that problem doesn't exist and he isn't a big part of the problem?

my ongoing monitoring of the critical response to the work of Marlene Dumas

Wow, another dismissive Marlene Dumas slam by Jerry Saltz -

"the below-average overhyped painter Marlene Dumas"

This follows "the second-rate Marlene Dumas" here (Artnet, 5/30/05), and "the flat-footed ways they're painted leave me completely cold" in a very brief mention of her work here (Art in America, 10/1994).

What is with these side-swipes? Has he ever actually reviewed any of her shows?

I saw Jerry Saltz in Miami when I was sitting outside of Scope. He very quickly came down the street (to my left) and went into the Scope hotel, was in there for maybe half an hour, then came back out and walked/ran on his cellphone down toward the beach. He was like the uber-epitome of the adrenaline-addled spectator he talks about here discussing art fairs -

"adrenaline-addled spectacles for a kind of buying and selling where intimacy, conviction, patience, and focused looking, not to mention looking again, are essentially nonexistent"

Maybe that was some kind of family-emergency phone call or something but if I hadn't known it was him I'd have thought he was some rabid collector, certainly not an art critic. I wouldn't call Saltz a "below-average" art critic, only because the bar is sooo fucking low, but except for his glib dislike of Dumas he is wildly inconsistent with his denouncing, celebrating same, denouncing, celebrating same. He is easy to read but tiresome.

Charlie Finch, Tyler Green, Richard Polsky, Jerry Saltz - four guys that aren't artists and don't like the work of Marlene Dumas.

Nicole Davis, Nicole Eisenmann, Joy Garnett, Cynthia King, Sarah Milroy, Adrian Searle, Barry Schwabsky, Richard Vine, Carol Vogel - some people that like Marlene Dumas.

Previous posts with some good Marlene Dumas comments here and here.

more thoughts on Dumas, Saltz, the art market, etc.

I’m glad to see that some artists have contributed thoughts on the work of Marlene Dumas. I think that what bothers me most about all of those artnet guy slams is that they have all been so offhand, not in the context of a review or anything but usually in articles about the market and its outrageous auction prices. Just lazy throw-away remarks. The latest diss came in the Jerry Saltz article critical of the auctions; that article mentions eleven artists (Mondrian, Modigliani, Gauguin, Johns, Warhol, Cattelan, Dumas, Barney, Peyton, Currin, Tuymans) but for only one artist is an opinion stated – Marlene Dumas. I guess that was a safe one to glibly diss, five of the other six living artists mentioned are based in NYC.

George made a good observation in the comments section of a recent Modern Kicks post on Saltz’s article - “Saltz complains about speculation at the auctions, but participates in promoting the speculation at the entry level”. YES. Another interesting thing about that post for me was JL’s remark that “the shakeout he (Saltz) longs for sounds like it would cost me my job. Let the eagle soar, I say”. It made me realize again that there are so many people working in the art industry dependent on its continued growth and expansion, maybe not always in the best interests of art? Are artists the only art industry people that don’t have salaries and insurance? Why are we on the bottom of the pile? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had job security to worry about?

Aren't you artists that don't live in NY sick of hearing about this fantastic market in which shows sell out before they open and everyone has a waiting list? They keep saying "the art market" like it is the same all over, but is that what's happening in Chicago, Boston, Philly and wherever else? Seriously, I don't know, so please tell me. It isn't happening in Richmond, that's for sure. Am I the only one that doesn't sell?

I doubt it. Spector Gallery is one of Philadelphia's *hot* galleries and Jim Houser is her hot artist but look at how low most of his prices are! I'm not saying I love his work or anything but I'm surprised that a hot artist in a hot gallery in a big city is so affordable what with all of this stuff we always here about the out-of-control market. I was similarly surprised last year when Sarah McEneaney, a Philadelphia artist whose work I do love and who gets great reviews, showed at Reynolds Gallery. Her prices were lower than I would have expected also.