How to Be an Artistby Jerry Saltz will be published March 17.
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Jerry Saltz and I first met the third week of May 1986.
Obviously, much has happened over the course of our 34-year friendship.
Ive had a life lived in art.
Ive spent my whole life looking at art, wanting to be around it around art and around artists.
LS: [Pauses.]
JS: This is the hardest thing for me to answer.
Let me make a run at answer a little bit differently.
A sportswriter doesnt have to play football to write about it.
JS: Well, I think Im more of a Sister WendyBob Ross folk critic.
I never went to school; I have no degrees.
I taught myself to write and didnt begin till I was in my 40s.
For me, Clement Greenberg is a big bully.
All art is subjective.
No one can prove Vermeer is better than Norman Rockwell.
Weve surrounded art with this magic-potion language that is written by 55 people for an audience of about 155.
But a lot of that talk I call bullshit.
I want directness, clarity, and judgment.
LS: Chapter one, page three, titled Dont Be Embarrassed.
Of course youre going to embarrass yourself.
I want you to be radically vulnerable.
Thats the price of admittance into the House of Creativity.
And that was the big tip-off to me.
That was proof that you used to be an artist, or that you are an artist.
Is that where you go every week when you write?
JS: Im terrified whenever I have to write.
I sit down, look at the screen, and think,I hate this.I have nothing to say.
I mean, how can I have anything to say at all?
JS: Yeah, the raging-bull, wild animal inside.
I think the fear is useful.
This is the dark energy that just keeps the engine churning.
I became a long-distance truck driver for ten years.
I self-exiled after I stopped making art, and I grew more and more and more unhappy.
And thats what procrastination will do.
Forget about the idea of being good.
Thats an idiotic idea, and this book has nothing to do with success.
LS: You stay far away from talk about the art economy in the book, which I love.
JS: The market, as you know, is just numbers.
The market only buys what other people in the market have already bought.
That has nothing to do with what Im trying to write about.
LS: Id love to hear your take onyour own Instagram.
JS:I have about a million followers cross-platforms.
And I started posting these images, which are extremely violent, in many cases, but theyre masterpieces.
Theyre gorgeous, and theyre sexual.
They have bodies compromised in every way, sexually, bestiallyevery waybut theyre actual masterpieces.
JS: I was wrong.
I did not shut up and listen, and
LS: Listen to what?
JS: To the criticism that people felt that it was sexist, lewd, and crude.
I saw it only as art.
I was completely divorced, really, from those charges, and I was wrong.
Were just a little bit … we have a hard time with naughty things; I do, too.
What a lovely thought, but when was the last time you went dancing?
I dance naked at home.
Its a horrific sight, but I want to dance barefoot before the world.
No one knows this, but I do it when I walk.
When Im walking, not talking.
At the end, I take off my shoes and dance in a few circles in gratefulness.
LS: Well, at least you practice what you preach.
