| Description |
354 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Summary |
"Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists, and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary readers to fine art as few critics have. An early champion of forgotten and overlooked women artists, he has also celebrated the pioneering work of African American, LGBTQ+, and other long-marginalized creators. Sotheby's Institute of Art has called him, simply, "the art critic." Now, in Art Is Life, Jerry Saltz draws on two decades of work to offer a real-time survey of contemporary art as a barometer of our times. Chronicling a period punctuated by dramatic turning points--from the cultural reset of 9/11 to the rolling social crises of today--Saltz traces how visionary artists have both documented and challenged the culture. Art Is Life offers Saltz's eye-opening appraisals of trailblazers like Kara Walker, David Wojnarowicz, Hilma af Klint, and Jasper Johns; provocateurs like Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, and Marina Abramović; and visionaries like Jackson Pollock, Bill Traylor, and Willem de Kooning. Saltz celebrates landmarks like the Obama portraits by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, writes searchingly about disturbing moments such as the Ankara gallery assassination, and offers surprising takes on figures from Thomas Kinkade to Kim Kardashian. And he shares stories of his own haunted childhood, his time as a "failed artist," and his epiphanies upon beholding work by Botticelli, Delacroix, and the cave painters of Niaux. With his signature blend of candor and conviction, Jerry Saltz argues in Art Is Life for the importance of the fearless artist--reminding us that art is a kind of channeled voice of human experience, a necessary window onto our times. The result is an openhearted and irresistibly readable appraisal by one of our most important cultural observers."-- Provided by publisher. |
| Note |
Includes index. |
| Contents |
The World Before and During: 1999-2001 -- What Different Looked Like: 2001-2008 -- Toward a Reckoning: 2009-2016 -- The Long American Night: 2016-2021. |
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Introduction: the Medusa and the Pequod -- My life as a failed artist -- THE WORLD BEFORE AND DURING : 1999-2001. Living large -- Jeffersonian Koons -- Auntie Hero: Alice Neel -- The anger artist: David Wojnarowicz -- Babylon now -- Keeping the faith -- WHAT DIFFERENT LOOKED LIKE : 2001-2008. Middle Americana: Norman Rockwell -- Harlem on his mind: Jacob Lawrence -- Poor memorial -- Babylon rising -- Worlds apart: Amar Kanwar -- Mourning glory: Steve McQueen -- Whatever Laurel wants -- Hammered -- The battle for Babylon -- Mr. System and Dr. Death: Luc Tuymans -- Killing fields: Thomas Hirschhorn -- The seventh circle: Nan Goldin -- The whole ball of wax -- Where the girls aren't -- Charnel knowledge: Carroll Dunham -- Deal or no deal: Takashi Murakami -- Buona serra -- Bohemian rhapsody: Elizabeth Murray -- The American Picasso: Robert Rauschenberg -- Frieze after the freeze -- TOWARD A RECKONING: 2009-2016. Leaving Eden: Pipilotti Rist, Cheryl Donegan, Kim Rosenfield -- After the orgy: Lisa Yuskavage -- Great artists steal: the pictures generation -- Duke Riley's insane triumph -- Georgia O'Keeffe: out of the erotic ghetto -- Thanks for the ride, Gavin! -- In praise of art gallery attendants -- The heroic Louise Bourgeois -- The ugly American: Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla -- De Kooning: definitive -- A wind that lashes everthing at once: Helen Frankenthaler -- Utterly possessing: Dorothea Tanning -- Cindy Sherman: becoming -- RIP Thomas Kinkade -- George W. Bush's painterly promise unfulfilled -- Magic amid the money -- Zombies on the walls: why does so much new abstraction look the same? -- Garry Winogrand captured America as it split wide open -- The great, inscrutable Robert Gober -- Chris Ofili's thumping art-history lesson -- Is there great art on Instagram? -- Iconoclasm now: Charlie Hebdo and the lethal power of art -- The most powerful artwork I have ever seen -- I got kicked off Facebook for posting images of medieval art -- The new new museum: the Whitney and the impossible problem of contemporary art -- Does the new Whitney show that modernism never really happened in America? -- Chris Burden's work was like an atomic bomb -- Why have there been no great women bad-boy artists? There have been, of course -- The Whitney rejected this masterpiece sculpture -- How Philip Guston reinvented the sublime -- Taryn Simon brings you face-to-face with death -- The mysteries of Dying Gaul -- THE LONG AMERICAN NIGHT: 2016-2021. The painting I can't stop thinking about: Kerry James Marshall -- The tyranny of art history in contemporary art -- Eric Fischl's great new work of American art -- Andreas Gursky predicted the future, and the present -- Considering the Ankara assassination photos as history painting -- Look outward, artist: what photography can learn from Danny Lyon -- Basquiat painting becomes priciest work ever sold by a U.S. artist -- The Obamas' official portraits rise to the occasion -- The drawing I can't stop thinking about: Bear's Heart at Frieze -- Kara Walker's triumphant new show is the best art made about America in this century -- Christie's is selling this painting for $100 million. They say it's by Leonardo. I have doubts. Big doubts -- LaToya Ruby Frazier is a Goya for Black America -- Cy Twombly and the transforming power of art -- The future belonged to Hilma af Klint -- How does the art world live with itself? -- This too is Andy Warhol: the story of an American revolutionary in eight works -- Why did it take so long for the world to recognize the genius of Joseph Yoakum? -- What the hell was modernism? -- Beauford Delaney, Black and gay, very nearly disappeared from art history -- No one looked at New York like Jason Polan -- Vida Americana: harbinger of immeasurable abundance -- The art world goes dark -- My appetites -- This is the saddest picture I have ever seen: Botticelli -- How Caravaggio destroyed (and saved) painting -- Jasper and me. |
| Subject |
Art and society.
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Art and society. (OCoLC)fst00815432
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| Other Form: |
Online version: Saltz, Jerry, 1951- Art is life New York : Riverhead Books, 2022 9780593086506 (DLC) 2022006449 |
| ISBN |
9780593086490 (hardcover) |
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059308649X (hardcover) |
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9780593086506 (ebook) |
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