Sympathy for the art gallery

This overfed, over-monied art world, Saltz explained, was a self-replicating machine: people think that “the art market is so smart that it only buys the best work…[but in reality]…the art market is so dumb that it buys anything other people are buying.” This has led to the dominance of very few styles and of four artists in particular: Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, and Richard Prince, of whom Saltz proceeded to offer up his frank opinions. “Hirst’s art,” he said, “looked good with people around it. In an empty gallery, not so much.” “Surface is what Jeff [Koons] is about,” he said, and surface has never looked so deep. He admitted to loving Murakami’s early paintings, but is less enamored of his later creations. Prince, he suggested, “invented a dangerous idea and packaged himself for the corporate boardroom.” He posited that the major premise of Prince’s art was appropriation, and that it was “the idea that ate the art world.

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