Saltz and the new definition of “dickish”

I’ve resisted commentary on the more prolific Jerry Saltz drama taking place these days on the grounds that any refutation of a critic’s reasoned argument that opens by calling said critic “dickish” is not worthy of intelligent consideration - although the underlying dickishness of the hollow discourse in itself is intelligently examined here.

Instead, I’m backtracking to the last time Saltz was having his regular 15 minutes on the blogosphere, back when his demand that MoMA include more women in its permanent collection installations made something in my own girly, delicate ovaries cringe in annoyance. Ultimately, it was the artificiality of the gesture that seemed to grate my nerves - the exclusion of women from modern art discourses is a historical fact against which many women artists have explicitly reacted, and the erasure of that history by the apologist addition of more heretofore underappreciated works by women feels like a consolation prize at best, and a lie at worst.

At the time, I felt Saltz was missing an opportunity to take up his chosen target, MoMA’s Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture Ann Temkin, on her challenge that he reconsider the bias that makes him dismiss the significance of other sections of the MoMA permanent collection dispaly where women are strongly represented - drawing, photography, and printmaking to name a few. Rather than rewriting the history of painting and sculpture (the arts that Saltz value above all others), it would be more honest and productive (and alas, more labour-intensive, but boo-fucking-hoo) to re-envision a modern art discourse that gives equal weight to all creative production, especially in our own increasingly post-discipline era. This is work that Saltz himself can easily pursue within his purported role as art critic - with an audience as vast as his, he is exceptionally well-equipped to bring more attention to women artists of all disciplines through his own choice of subjects for his many published reviews, articles and illiterate Facebook rants.

Installation of Piplotti Rist’s “Pour Your Body Out.” Photo: Frederick Charles/Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art. Courtesy of the Artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, London. (Source: nymag.com)

I had even presumed that Saltz would naturally include the weapon of his own productive (rather than condemning) voice in his crusade for gender equality, but anaba has been watching more closely and turned up one hell of an interesting statistic, phrased as ever in his delightfully colloquial tone:

“I don’t get how JS keeps up this appearance of being a champion of women. How many reviews dedicated to the solo show of a woman has he written in the past YEAR? One…. and it was Georgia O’Keefe. Talk about shut up or nut up. Even Schjeldahl, who also didn’t review the solo show of a living woman in the past year, beat JS by two dead women.

“The last show of a living female artist JS has dedicated a full review to was Pipilotti Rist at MoMA, published 12/28/08. What year is it now? Oh yeah, 2010.”

Given the wordspace Saltz devoted to the “Swiss miss”’s gender rather than her art in said review, you’d think he’d have taken that crusade with him into 2009. Apparently not.

Anaba wraps his critique of Saltz’s inability to “nut up” by offering up his own blogspace for any reviews Saltz may care to write about living women artists - generous given that Saltz still doesn’t host his own blog, but the fact remains that he doesn’t need that option. I refuse to entertain any belief that New York Magazine is at fault for the lack of coverage - even as an occasional contributor to major art magazines, at the bottom of the pecking order, I enjoy the privilege of choosing my subjects and can’t imagine Saltz doesn’t do the same. His “dickish” choice of exhibitions to review is, frankly, all down to him, patronizing lip service to women artists be damned.

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