Jerry Saltz
speaker
592 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 10 Jul
Jerry Saltz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Kehinde has his studio fill in a cuckoo background and sets Barack on an African chair. I guess that's his contribution. And as a painting, It is completely unoriginal. As an image of Obama, it's unlike every other presidential portrait ever made. So it depends how you, I judge it as a thing, not as what the artist says it is. My wife says no artist owns the meaning of their own work.
In other words, each of us, as Oscar Wilde said, when we read a book, we're not reading the author. You're reading yourself. When you read Dante, you are reading yourself into Dante, into Shakespeare, into Mozart, into Jay-Z, into Beyonce, whoever. The other portrait was much better of Amy Sherald.
Bingo. And you know what? There are a lot of artists like that. I can tell you their names if you want to go. They will never make you go deep. What they'll make you do is they'll tell you what you already know and they'll tell you the same thing over and over again. And that's very reassuring. I don't look to art to be reassured. That's also saying, oh, a black woman could be Napoleon.
That's a cool thought, but it would be cooler if you could make it a cooler painting. And he can't do it. And other artists do. Do you know who Dwayne Wade is? I do not know. Who is Dwayne Wade? This is perfect.
So that's Dwayne Wade, great, great athlete.
That's true. It doesn't look anything like him. What I'll say is that is an absolute s***. work of art because it looks like a little mini statue on an idiotic store-bought trophy and it's just got it there's nothing to it other than the pose so you want to and he looks like the rock He looks white, which is fine with me, but, you know, it has no character. It has no ambience.
Well, it's not that important to me. I can see that it could be important to people who worship that person. But I would remind all of those worshipers and fans that all the different pictures of Jesus that they've seen are equally realistic and equal fictions. that they're idealized or de-idealized or maybe you like Francis Bacon's exploding Jesus. Maybe that speaks to you.
What this says is I wanted to be a realist sculptor and I found a photograph and I made it without paying much attention to it at all. other than the signature pose. So in the next generation, we'll look at that sculpture and see metal. They won't see a person. They won't see a likeness. They'll see a material, and even the material isn't that interesting. Right, the bronze.
That's all they're going to see. I promise you. It looks like a lot of academic sculpture. You know, the mouth is open. I can see the teeth. Somebody got in there and filed them down. Good on them. Good technique, I guess. That's good. I would pay $400 for that and put it in a backyard at best. There's nothing wrong with that. That's fun.
I'd love to hear it.
It looks like art by committee. That's what it is. It looks like art by more than one person with no touch, no hand, only an idea. They're not even artists, those two guys. They're entrepreneurs. They're scammers. They don't know it. Listen.
To me, I allege that they might be scammers in this sense, that Oscar Wilde said all the worst poetry is sincere. So what? That they sincerely wanted to make this realistic. Good on them. I didn't take that away from them. I don't think it looks like anybody.
No, that's fine. Dwayne Reed liked it, and he's cool with it. And could they have made something magnificent? Yes, they could. But they could have also made something much worse. It could have been a piece of string, you know, tied to a chain, some bulls**t. That happens as well. So this is a happy medium between thinking and non-thinking that looks like a photograph in three dimensions.
What do you think of this sculpture?
I've stood there. I've posed with him. What I want to say is that some of the greatest sculpture ever made was made in Greece and Rome of athletes.
Okay.
This... As much as I love the first Rocky movie.
Yeah, watch it. You know, it has a happy ending, whatever. But the point is, as a work of art... It only goes to the Wade Johnson place. You could put the name Wade Johnson on this. It would be the same. The pose has- Oh, the Dwayne Wade, you mean. The Dwayne Wade.
So I love it. So this is another... Is that you? No. Oh, that's Sylvester Stallone. Ha ha ha ha! He's as tall as I am. I love him. He's a big Trump guy, but he's done good work. And you know what? That's true. All that's true. It's fine. You know, Dwayne Reed and that guy, they contributed a lot to the culture.
They should get statues of themselves.
Showing 541–560 of 592 · page 28 of 30
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