defining good art

“The word ‘pain’ is in the word ‘painting.’” - Brice Marden

"Art has many purposes. But for the first 50,000 years of its life, it was meant to make you fertile, to ward off demons, to speak to the dead, to guide you through the afterlife, to protect cities, to make it rain, etc" - Jerry Saltz

"We sell art short if we’re not critical of it. Being critical of art is a way of showing art respect. People are wrong to say: “It’s mean to write a negative review.” On the contrary, it’s a very intimate, even loving thing to do." - Jerry Saltz

To me, education has do with being open, flexible, alive to ideas from everywhere. Unafraid of getting things wrong. No one knows anything in art anyway. Not really. Education is making sure that you’re not always showing the right artists who show in the right spaces and are written about by the right critics and curators and collected by the righ

If museums don’t let more of the world in soon, soon the world will let fewer museums in. - Jerry Saltz

I want writing to form communities, create a chorus, be a living text of compulsions. - Jerry Saltz

“The one thing not worth looking at is the obvious.” This sort of art tells you everything in an instant and can only tell you the same thing forever." from The Critic as Artist. By Oscar Wilde