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October 15, 2007
Saltz's Babylon: The scene is the thing
I think Jerry Saltz is one of the most astute commenters on New York art. In fact, Saltz is held in high regard by not just the Chelsea crowd, but by his journalist peers: Among art critics, only the LAT's Christopher Knight has been a more frequent Pulitzer Prize finalist than Saltz. But with this year's Babylon column Saltz missed the mark.
'Babylon' is Saltzian shorthand for the critic's annual fall look at New York. The current installment is Saltz's first since leaving the Village Voice for New York mag. After a ridiculously alarmist headline (for which I blame the magazine) "Has Money Ruined Art?," Saltz spends 3,700 words not on art, but instead on the pre-eminence of money in the art world. In near GawkerForum-style, Saltz builds up clubby NYC-centric anecdote after anecdote to present an image of a community awash in cash. Ironically, for at least a week Saltz joined the crowd he professes to dislike: He became one of those writers more interested in the scene than in art.
Here's why I don't like it: One of the important roles of a critic is to step outside the immediate present, to resist fads, to exert judgment when popularity dominates. By so doing a critic should place art in what s/he thinks is the right context, s/he should say what's important now and s/he should consider what could matter in 50 years, in 100 years -- and not what will matter at the next Bottino Boesky bash.
If you are a critic and if you care about art and think that the party story has overtaken art, hold your ground: Advocate, pontificate, elevate, urge, denounce and push. With his 2007 Babylon column, Saltz effectively ran up the white flag of surrender and joined in the Weltschmerz of the moment, the GawkerForum-ization of the present.
"The words 'New York is dead' rocketed through my head last month," Saltz writes introducing three paragraphs in which he decries how A-listers are treated and how C-listers aren't at an Aaron Young performance. Saltz never quite comes to judgment or insight, he mostly covers the scene the way GawkerForum sucks up at Brice Marden openings. Why can't art be considered within the context of art and not within the context of the scene? Isn't that what a critic is able -- in fact, privileged -- to do more than anyone else in the art world? In fact, the critic is supposed to be above the fray in a way that collectors, dealers and curators aren't -- and that's an important and presently undervalued seat. It is much of the source of the critic's authority. If the critic can't ignore the scene to write about the work, who can? That's why when David Rimanelli goes to write about a show for Artforum and ends up trying on children's clothing in the show's curator's closet -- and writing about it -- we guffaw and feel sorry for what Rimanelli became: A joke.
Worse, much of Babylon07 touches on something else that's crept into so much art writing: A want to belong, a desire to preserve 'the art community,' to keep it the way it was, the writer's desire to be in the right crowd with the right people. Saltz joined Money in the spirit of its enterprise: Elevating the moment, the scene, the glitzy dirty sexy money, the par-tay, over art. For those of us who are uninterested in the scene, who roll our eyes at those who just want to belong! to fit in!, the art is everything. The trend is away from that: I think of one recent emailer who told me that he was proud that the art critic at his city's newspaper was finally "representing" the city. Well, sycophantic side-shows represent, yo. That's not an art critic's job. The trend toward featurization of art writing has also generated a rash of writers who unquestioningly fall hook-line-and-sinker for PR spin knowing that they'll stay on the right lists. Too many writers prefer using gushy feature stories as their ticket to the dance and have given up on challenging authority, on earned, begrudging respect.
Babylon07 is from a trope much-favored by scenesters: It's an insider's lament, the kind of write-up that earns props inside a community because the writer has spoken out against the perceived dominant influence. Simultaneously the writer seems to have gained credibility outside his community because he has dared to challenge Big Players who are squatting on his home turf. Except in reality Saltz is the dominant influence. And he isn't so much challenging as he is acquiescing. (New York is a company town, and Saltz & Smith is the biggest firm in art writing.)
Back in January Saltz covered some of this same ground (complete with many of the same examples, including Dumas and Eder) in a tighter, more probing lament for the Village Voice: "In our studios and before artworks we still experience moments of authentic serenity, passion, and meaningfulness--places on the edge of language that the market can't strip away. In this imperfect realm we can intuit the elemental feeling that sometimes, just by making or looking at art, we might glimpse the full range of human possibilities. The market is art minus otherness. The rest is gossip."
Babylon07 is gossip.
Posted October 15, 2007 10:29 AM
