Now people look at 'The Scream' or Van Gogh's 'Irises' or a Picasso and see its new content: money. Auction houses inherently equate capital with value.
Interpretation
The quote critiques how monetary value has overshadowed the intrinsic value of art.
Jerry Saltz emphasizes the troubling trend in the art world where the financial worth of artworks, such as 'The Scream' or Van Gogh's 'Irises', has become more significant than their cultural or emotional meanings. It highlights how auction houses commodify art, equating its value solely with capital, leading to a distorted understanding of what art truly represents.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of money in art, this quote can highlight concerns about commodification.
'Untitled' is a time machine that can transport you to 1992, an edgy moment when the art world was crumbling, money was scarce, and artists like Tiravanija were in the nascent stages of combining Happenings, performance art, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, and the do-it-yourself ethos of punk. Meanwhile, a new art world was coming into being.
Artists working for other artists is all about knowing, learning, unlearning, initiating long-term artistic dialogues, making connections, creating covens, and getting temporary shelter from the storm.
I have a soft spot for art that, in terms of subject matter and material, is in bad taste.
The giant white cube is now impeding rather than enhancing the rhythms of art. It preprograms a viewer's journey, shifts the emphasis from process to product, and lacks individuality and openness. It's not that art should be seen only in rutty bombed-out environments, but it should seem alive.
In art, scandal is a false narrative, a smoke screen that camouflages rather than reveals. When we don't know what we're seeing, we overreact.
I don't often go to curator or artist walk-throughs of exhibitions. For a critic, it feels like cheating. I want to see shows with my own eyes, making my own mistakes, viewing exhibitions the way most of their audience sees them.
Poems infatuated with their own smarts and detached from any emotional grounding can leave the reader feeling lonely, empty and ashamed for having expected more. Like icy adolescents, such poetry is more interested in commiserating than acknowledging that feelings — the sentiments that make us susceptible to sentimentality — actually exist.
In Náhuatl, the language of the Aztec world, one key word for poet was 'tlamatine,' meaning 'the one who knows,' or 'he who knows something.' Poets were considered 'sages of the word,' who meditated on human enigmas and explored the beyond, the realm of the gods.
You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else.
The dream is not a map. A poem is not the territory. The dreamer reclines in a barbershop carpeted with Afro turf. In the dark some soul yells. It hurts to walk barefoot on cowrie shells.
The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.
I've always wanted to be aware of what's going on around me, and I've wanted to use photography as an instrument of research into and reporting on the life of my own time.
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