100 Pieces of Art with Jerry Saltz

Summary

Podcast Summary: All Of It — “100 Pieces of Art with Jerry Saltz”

Podcast: All Of It
Host: Alison Stewart (WNYC)
Guest: Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic for New York Magazine, Pulitzer Prize winner
Date: September 9, 2024
Episode Focus: Celebrating 100 must-see works of art in New York City with expert input, highlighting the breadth of art in NYC through Jerry Saltz’s recommendations, stories, and engaging listener calls.

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Episode Overview

The episode celebrates WNYC’s 100th anniversary with a unique project: compiling a list of 100 essential pieces of art to experience in New York City. Alison Stewart welcomes renowned art critic Jerry Saltz to share his picks, discuss what makes art meaningful, and hear from passionate listeners about their favorites. The conversation traverses centuries, genres, and artistic experiences—from Renaissance painting to contemporary public sculpture—while underscoring how art permeates everyday life in NYC and brings people together.

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Main Discussion Points and Insights

Jerry Saltz's Criteria For Art Selection

• Expansive Definition of Art: Saltz emphasizes inclusivity, stating “anything can be art,” and chooses pieces ranging from public sculptures and historic panoramas to works once considered unfashionable.
  Quote: “If there were cave paintings in New York, I would have picked them to say that those are the greatest port of mammals ever made.” (01:39)
• Personal Connection: He intertwines personal stories of art encounters, placing value on how art makes viewers feel rather than on technical metrics.

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1. Giovanni di Paolo’s "Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise" (The Met)

• Saltz’s Childhood Encounter: He shares a powerful memory of being left at the Art Institute of Chicago and accidentally discovering di Paolo’s work, sparking an instant, emotional connection to narrative painting.
  Quote: “I suddenly understood this painting was telling a story. And that organized my visual thinking…” (02:16)
• Advice for Viewers: Saltz urges visitors to the Met’s Lehman Wing to “surrender” to art, experiencing without analytical barriers.
  Quote: “You cannot stand in front of a work of art and ask, what does this mean? We never ask, what does Mozart mean? We experience a work of art.” (04:29)
• Interpretation: The painting’s depiction of Adam and Eve “tells that story of bravery and knowledge of our first mother, Eve,” highlighting the complexity and multifaceted nature of biblical stories. (05:35)

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2. Listener Contributions: The Personal Side of Art

• Edward Hopper’s "Early Sunday Morning" (Bob from Lawrenceville, NJ | 07:13–08:35):

  • Bob’s Take: Praises Hopper’s “wonderful colors” and rhythmic windows.
  • Saltz’s Response: Refutes the popular notion of Hopper’s work as strictly lonely, instead finding “a form of joy and a form of loneliness, which is solitude.”
    • Quote: “That sense of being ourselves in an empty space before it’s occupied by other people…” (07:49)

• Eleanor Roosevelt Sculpture (Judith from UWS | 08:41–09:30):

  • Judith’s Memory: Shares communal experiences gathering at the statue to read the Declaration of Independence.
  • Public Art Discussion: Saltz notes the private/public dichotomy of sculpture, referencing contemporary debates surrounding monuments.
    • Quote: “Isn’t public sculpture interesting because it exists in public and we experience it in private, and yet it can become the focal point of incredible tension…” (09:30)

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3. The Panorama of the City of New York (Queens Museum) (10:46)

• Cultural History: Built in 1964 for the World’s Fair under Robert Moses, this gigantic model allows visitors to see “a city you’ve never seen before.”
  Quote: “...a 9335 square foot model of the city that I live in. That you live in.” (10:48)
• Magical Realism: Saltz describes the blend of artifice and magic (“It’s not magic, but it’s magical.”), likening it to Borges’s one-to-one mapping idea. (12:11)

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4. David Hammons’ "Day’s End" (West Side Piers) (12:56)

• Description: A ghostly aluminum sculpture echoing a lost pier’s history—from slave trade and industry to queer nightlife and artistic transformation.
• Artist Profile: Saltz calls Hammons “a hero, an anti-artist...channels a dark, anti-heroic insider, outsider energy” (13:18), celebrating his refusal to conform.
• Urban Art Ecosystem: Mentions viewing the piece from the Whitney Museum and muses on Little Island’s contrasting public architecture.

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5. James Turrell’s "Meeting" (MoMA PS1) (16:21)

• Listener Pick (Kathy): Describes entering the sky room as “magical, spiritual, beautiful… reverie of solitude and contemplation.” (16:29)
• Saltz’s Addition: Emphasizes the transformative experience of lying beneath the open sky.
  • Quote: “They pull the ceiling back and you...look up at the sky. It could be anything. And it takes you out of yourself.” (17:13)

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6. Jasper Johns’ "American Flag" (MoMA) (18:27)

• Origin Story: Inspired by a dream, Johns paints his first flag at age 24.
• Material Innovation: Adopts encaustic for texture and immediacy.
  • Quote: “It embodies every mark, every stroke, every thought. It embodies the process. And is it a real flag?...Is it satiric or is it patriotic?”
• Saltz’s Advice to Artists:
  • Quote: “You do everything you can do. If you can avoid it, avoid it. And then you do what is helpless and unavoidable.” (20:32)
  • Message: Embrace the unavoidable, even if it’s embarrassing or frightening.

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7. Picasso’s "Les Demoiselles d’Avignon" (MoMA) (21:07–23:41)

• Radical Departure: Described as “resurrection, insurrection, revolution,” this marks a shattering of classic perspective in art.
• The Picasso-Matisse Rivalry: Sets up a dynamic between the “succulent Frenchman and the truculent Spaniard,” leading to Cubism’s birth.
• Guard Note: Saltz is self-aware about the “great man theory” but acknowledges its former dominance.
  • Quote: “That time is over. Thank God.”

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8. Kouros and Roman Wall Paintings (The Met) (23:52)

• Met’s Layout: Praises the immediacy and diversity of the Met vs. the Louvre's “mall”-like feeling.
• Cultural Significance: Discusses how Greek sculpture introduced motion and individuality into art.
  • Quote: “From immortality to mortality...to the shadows of our world. And it is amazing.” (25:31)

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9. Van Gogh at The Met and MoMA (28:11)

• Surface as Subject: Saltz points out the democratization of every brushstroke and the move away from “hierarchical composition.”
  • Quote: “Every line, every mark, every motion is equally important to every other one.” (28:24)
• Myth Busting: Van Gogh was poor but already well-known in his lifetime.

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10. Henri Rousseau’s "The Sleeping Gypsy" (MoMA) (30:19)

• Listener Connection (Tina): Associated since childhood, finds magic in Rousseau’s self-taught vision, light, and peaceful surrealism.

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11. Kara Walker’s "A Subtlety" (Brooklyn, former Domino Sugar Factory) (32:08)

• Major Impact: Saltz and Stewart recall its “shock” and hypnotic power.
  • Quote: “It hit you in the face and took you by the throat and then coaxed you into like hypnosis.” (33:11)
• Contemporary Resonance: Walker’s 2017 MoMA drawing, “Christ’s Entry into Journalism,” highlighted as encapsulating “our long, beautiful, tremendous American story…chaos, sex, endurance, graphic genius…captured.” (34:15)

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• Art’s Diversity: “There are as there are a hundred people, there are a hundred beauties.” — Jerry Saltz (02:22)
• On experiencing art: “Open yourself up, silenced the critics and listened to the voices in your head.” — Jerry Saltz (04:41)
• On public sculpture: “It exists in public and we experience it in private, and yet it can become the focal point of incredible tension…” — Jerry Saltz (09:30)
• Encouragement for artists: “When you’re being embarrassed and are afraid of what you’re doing, keep doing it.” — Jerry Saltz (20:54)
• The function of the Met: “At the Met, you walk in…you’re seeing art. Unlike the Louvre…” — Jerry Saltz (24:08)
• About Kara Walker’s "A Subtlety": “I always thought that that should have been placed on a huge float and driven across the United States.” — Jerry Saltz (33:08)

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Useful Timestamps

• [01:39] — Saltz describes his inclusive criteria for art.
• [02:16] — Childhood epiphany with Giovanni di Paolo.
• [04:41] — Advice about how to truly experience art.
• [10:46] — On the Queens Museum's New York Panorama.
• [12:56] — Introduction and discussion of David Hammons’ "Day’s End."
• [17:13] — James Turrell’s "Meeting" described as transformative.
• [18:27] — Jasper Johns’ "American Flag" and the artist's process.
• [21:07] — Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” explanation.
• [23:52] — The Met’s Kouros and Roman wall paintings.
• [28:11] — The egalitarian surface of Van Gogh.
• [32:08] — Kara Walker’s "A Subtlety" and its impact.

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Overall Tone and Takeaways

The episode is both celebratory and contemplative, blending Saltz’s passionate, witty insights with listeners’ heartfelt stories. It highlights the democratizing power of art, New York’s incomparable diversity, and the value of direct, personal encounters with culture. Alison Stewart’s thoughtful prompts and Jerry Saltz’s memorable, informal yet scholarship-rich commentary make this a lively, welcoming conversation for art lovers and newcomers alike.

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For Further Exploration:

• Full list of Jerry Saltz’s picks will be available through WNYC/All Of It.
• Many mentioned works are accessible at NYC’s major museums (The Met, MoMA, Whitney, PS1, Queens Museum) and public spaces.

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Transcript

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[Alison Stewart]

We are celebrating 100 pieces of art to see in New York City. A completely unscientific but heartfelt recognition that we live in a city with some of the finest art around. We just have to take the time to look. As we've been celebrating WNYC's 100th, we've been asking experts in the field for their recommendations for pieces of art that people here should make time to see. We've spoken to Art News editor Sarah Douglas and New York Times critic Will Heinrich. Thelma Golden's on the list for November. Today we are welcoming Pulitzer Prize winner Jerry Salt, senior art critic for New York Magazine. So good to see you, Jerry.

[Jerry Saltz]

Great to see you.

[Alison Stewart]

Alison Stewart, Listeners, we want you in on this. What is your favorite piece of art to see? 2124-3396-9221-2433 Our social media is available NYC. What is your favorite piece of art to see? And then you gotta tell us why. 212-433-969-2212-4433 wnyc. So when you were thinking about the list, we're gonna get right into it, but what criteria did you use?

[Jerry Saltz]

I wanted to give people the sense that anything can be art, that I've picked a giant public sculpture that's almost invisible. I picked an enormous panorama that might not even be seen as art. If there were cave paintings in New York, I would have picked them to say that those are the greatest port of mammals ever made. I picked contemporary art, modernism and art that was deemed to be no good. And one work of art that floored me.

[Alison Stewart]

All right, let's start with Giovanni di Paolo, the creation of the World and the expulsion from Paradise.

[Jerry Saltz]

I have to say in 1445. It turns out that my chaos might have been organized into one idea of beauty. There are as there are a hundred people, there are a hundred beauties. When I was 10 years old, I'm going to tell a little bit of a sad story. My aspirational Jewish mother drove me in from our suburb in Chicago to the Art Institute of Chicago when I was 10 and parked me there and left me there alone. I know that I never paid attention to art. I didn't like art. It wasn't baseball. I did not care about it. And I sort of wandered around until I saw one diptych by Giovanni di Paolo. But I was not even bothering to read the labels of a man on the left standing in a prison cell. And there were guards around him. He was being visited by an angel talking to people. And on the right I saw his neck had been extended. Outside the prison cell a swordsman had just lopped off his head that was being placed on a plate. There was blood everywhere. I looked back and forth and back and forth to this gorgeous Sienes Renaissance painting in blues and pinks and salmons. And I suddenly understood this painting was telling a story. And that organized my visual thinking instantaneously around it. Giovanni da Paolo turns out to be the painter of the creation of the world and the expulsion from paradise, which I saw the first time I was in New York. And when I visited here and slept in Central park, had no place to go, but had to come. And I visited the Met and I saw what I think may be the most beautiful painting ever. And then everything became beautiful and ugly. So I just want to tell people to go to the layman wing at the Met and prepare to surrender. Because that's what you have to do to art. You cannot stand in front of a work of art and ask, what does this mean? We never ask, what does Mozart mean? We experience a work of art. Open yourself up, silenced the critics and listened to the voices in your head.

[Alison Stewart]

That piece is so interesting because it's almost a mosaic quality to it.

[Jerry Saltz]

Very much. Yeah. You don't even. It's different parts. That's brilliant. I wish I had said that.

[Alison Stewart]

What do you think the piece does? Expands on the trope of Adam and Eve leaving the garden.

[Jerry Saltz]

Well, in Christianity we all exist in a fallen state. And we experience that every minute of our lives as the I that lives inside of each one of us is also a stranger to us. And we feel happy one second and then lost and confused on the other. And this beautiful portrayal of our first parents being executed, as it were, because of Eve's bravery, the story is told backwards. Eve is finds the apple, eats it, even though she knows what this means. And what does she do? Something that no man would ever do. She picks a second apple and brings it back to Adam and says, eat. He has a freak out. I don't think we should. He eats half of it. So Eve has eaten a full apple and a half. Adam has eaten one half apple. And this painting, I think, tells that story of that bravery and knowledge of our first mother, Eve. And then the subsequent image on the right hand side of the painting, of them being moved out of the garden by the archangel.

[Alison Stewart]

Our phone lines are buzzing. Let's say a couple calls. Bob from Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Hi, Bob. Thanks for calling, all of it.

[Bob]

Hello. You can hear me? I'm sure we can. The favorite work of art of mine is Early Sunday Morning by Edward Hopworth Whitney. It is wonderfully painted. It has bright colors. It has a rhythm to it because you're looking at a row of windows, of townhouses, and the shades are open to different lengths and it's just gorgeous. And the shadows are very strong. It's pure Hopper.

[Jerry Saltz]

You are so right. What's his name?

[Alison Stewart]

Bob.

[Jerry Saltz]

Bob. Bob, you have a good eye. That painting by Hopper gets an idea not of loneliness, as been pointed out elsewhere, but of a deeper idea of. Of solitude, of that sense of being ourselves in an empty space before it's occupied by other people. Where when we notice the shadows, the light, we smell the atmosphere, we experience a form of joy and a form of loneliness, which is solitude. Good eye, Bob.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Judith on three, calling in from the Upper west side. Hi, Judith.

[Judith]

Hi. I. I love Eleanor Roosevelt in a very. She's just Wonderful. It's on 72nd street, as at the beginning of Riverside Park.

[Steve]

And it's.

[Judith]

It's right out there for the whole world to enjoy.

[Alison Stewart]

And what do you like about it?

[Judith]

Well, it's just her. She's in such a nice contemplative state. And I have. We used to gather there and read the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July. And it was just so nice to hang out with her and read that. Now. Now we. Now we do it at a different location.

[Jerry Saltz]

Isn't public sculpture isn't. Sorry to interrupt. Isn't public sculpture interesting because it exists in public and we experience it in private, and yet it can become the focal point of incredible tension, political, religious. We saw the Confederate statues, which are supercharged, that were put up in the 30s and the 40s, becoming the focus. And in this coming election, I'm sure we're gonna have to hear about that. That is called iconoclasm, the fear and hatred of images.

[Alison Stewart]

My guest is Jerry Saltz. He is senior art critic for New York Magazine. He's helping us put together Our list of 100 pieces to see in New York City. Listeners, what is your favorite piece of art to look at? 2124-3396-9221-2433, WNYC. You can call that number or text us. Also social Media is available at Olive nyc. Back to your list, the Queen's Museum panorama of the city of New York. This is so exciting.

[Jerry Saltz]

You've seen it.

[Alison Stewart]

I love it.

[Jerry Saltz]

Everybody has seen it. And if you haven't, get thee to the Queen's Museum out in. It was built in 1964 in the American century, by the American century centrist Robert Effing Moses, who had visions for our city to tear it down, to rebuild it. Nothing could stand in his way. Read the Robert Cairo biography. This is a 9335 square foot model of the city that I live in. That you live in. And we go there and we see where Walt Whitman stood when he wrote Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. We see where the Titanic might have docked had she made it. You see your city, but a city you've never seen before. I look at that every time Alison, and I think, what neighborhood is that? I have to go there. What's your experience of it?

[Alison Stewart]

I love watching the little plane take off. I don't know why. I can see the wires, I can see the hangers, but I love watching the little plane take off.

[Jerry Saltz]

Yeah, that's artifice visible that you don't. It's not magic, but it's magical. And it's from LaGuardia, this crappy little airport that they have not remodeled yet. So if you want to see the old LaGuardia that I grew up, up with and loved because it's so close to my house, go to the Queen's Museum because you're seeing almost a Borges idea of a one to one scale of something so gigantic that it shouldn't be attempted, but there it is. I've been lucky enough to walk on it and when they cleaned it, I think in 1992, that's pretty cool.

[Alison Stewart]

Good to be Jerry Saltz, number two. Yesterday I went for a little walk down the west side highway and it still amazes me when I see it. David Hammond's the Day's End. It's this beautiful, beautiful sculpture on the west side on the piers. Would you describe it for folks who haven't seen it or maybe wondering what it was?

[Jerry Saltz]

That's a great question because it's there and not there. It's sort of a very large aluminum outline of what appears like it was once one of the piers. In fact, right off Gansevoort and the west side Highway. It is a recreation of a former pier, a pier where there were slaves sold. A piercing that saw amazing strikes, industry and a pier. When I moved here in the 1980s, that was still being used by the queer community for cruising a pier that was used by a very famous late artist named Gordon Matta Clark, who took a chainsaw to it and cut it up. This sculpture is a ghost sculpture by a hero. Anti artist David Hammons has never been represented by a gallery, yet he has appeared outside of Cooper Union and sold snowballs. He urinated on a large Richard Serra sculpture. He's one of the most famous artists in the world. And yet he channels a dark, anti heroic insider, outsider energy. And I want to call your attention, since I'm yammering about it, to the Whitney Museum, which is just across the west side highway, which is your museum. Like the shows, hate them. Like the Biennial. Hate the Biennial. It doesn't matter because it's a downtown museum also, much to my chagrin and delight, Little Island, I think it's called.

[Alison Stewart]

Oh yes.

[Jerry Saltz]

By for me, the worst public architect of all time, Thomas Heatherwick, who built the awful Schwarm thing in the God awful Hudson Yards that should be torn down instantly. He came up with this thing. It's pretty. Pretty good.

[Alison Stewart]

It's pretty good. And also from the museum, from the Whitney you can see David Hammond from a different direction.

[Jerry Saltz]

Yes.

[Alison Stewart]

Which is kind of exciting.

[Jerry Saltz]

Beautiful view of it.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Nick. Nick is online too. Hi Nick, thanks for calling all of it.

[Nick]

Yeah, hi, I just wanted to put in a word, a plug for the. The old municipal building at 1 Center Street. That building takes my breath away and it just inspires incredible awe and reverence every time I see it. It's so majestic and everyone should see that building. It's just the architecture just blows me away.

[Alison Stewart]

Used to be WNYC's first home. So there you go. Let's talk to Kathy. Hi Kat, Kathy's calling from Manhattan. Hi Kathy, thanks for calling all of it.

[Bob]

Hi.

[Kathy]

Thank you. Yes. My suggestion and. Hi, Jerry. I've met you through SVA and lots of other things.

[Jerry Saltz]

Hi Kathy.

[Kathy]

One of my favorite pieces that probably a lot of people don't know about is James Turrell's the Meeting, which is in MoMA's PS1. I don't know how many people have been to PS1, but it is an unusual piece. First of all, PS1 used to be a public school. So you're on this third floor and you're walking down what feels like a funky old school corridor and you open up this door and then you enter into this magical, spiritual, beautiful sky space that just leaves you in this reverie of solitude and contemplation and beauty of what Terrell does with his work.

[Jerry Saltz]

KATHY I just want to add, for people that may not know it, they pull the ceiling back and you lie down on the bench and you look up at the sky. It could be dark, it could be clear blue. You could see birds float by. It could be anything. And it, it takes you out of yourself.

[Alison Stewart]

KATHY we'll have more with Jerry Saltz after a quick break. This is all of it. This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We've been celebrating WNYC's 100th birthday by asking experts in the field for their recommendations for Our list of 100 pieces of art you should see when you live in New York. Jerry Salt is a senior art critic for New York magazine. He's given us some lists, some suggestions for our list. Let's go in at, let's go in at number five that you put on your list. Jasper johns, the American Flag from moma. One blurb read, One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag. The next morning I got up, I went out and I bought the materials to begin it.

[Jerry Saltz]

Jasper John says, think of that, ALISON how many artists listening to this, how many people listening to this were given a whole career in their dream? How many of you dreamt last night something and you thought, oh, that's cool, and then you just forgot it or you didn't pay attention to it. And this young gay man, when he was 24 years old, never went to art school, was living with Robert Rauschenberg, his lover, who every time people come in contact with Robert Rauschenberg, extraordinary things came out of them. He was a great artist. Johns was painting icky abstract expressionist paintings, just like all of you. And then he had this dream, like Alison said, that he painted the flag, he went out, he started to paint it, but the paint he was using was too, like, messy and wouldn't dry fast enough. And he picked up a material he heard about called encaustic. This is heated bees honey, wax mixed with pigment. It was used to wrap mummies. It was used for Roman wall paintings. It embodies every mark, every stroke, every thought. It embodies the process. And is it a real flag? It's an image of a flag. It's a triptych. Or is it a picture of a flag? Is it satiric or is it patriotic? Is it what is the flag? He asked a question that still finds no answer. But change the course of American art history jumped off the tracks with Jasper Johns. He said, you do everything you can do. Artists, listen to this. You do everything you can do everything you can. If you can avoid it, avoid it. And then you do what is helpless and unavoidable. In other words, you lose your fear, or you keep it and still do things that you know will embarrass you. When you're being embarrassed and are afraid of what you're doing, keep doing it.

[Alison Stewart]

You have a Pablo Picasso on the list at the Museum of Modern Art. It's a very angular piece of work. Tell us about this work when it was done.

[Jerry Saltz]

Whoa. Well, that is a resurrection, insurrection, revolution. It may be the greatest single shot ever fired over the bow of modern art history in 1909 by the young Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso, who was short, I'd like to say my height and shorter, the big baby. He had a very high voice.

[Alison Stewart]

He spoke like that a little bit.

[Jerry Saltz]

But he was an amazing person. That went immediately to war, aesthetic war, with the most famous painter in town, Henri Matisse. So you had the succulent Frenchman and the truculent Spaniard. You had this painter of a new beauty and this painter of revolution. Picasso painted the Five Whores of Avignon Street. That is what the title means. They look at us like they mean business. You cannot be holding a book. You cannot be having small talk with them. They are naked. They look directly at you. There's a very phallic still life right in front of the painting in this shattered ice field of space, where space is finally collapsed. The space of 400 years of the prison, of. Of perspective was finally shattered in this painting. And so begins. Matisse is one of the first people to see it. He doesn't like the painting, but he says it's cubistic, and he knew what it meant. It knew he had to fire back. And so the two of them began sort of dueling with each other. And the results are very moving and very powerful for modernists, of course. I need to finish with. I know this is all capturing the great man theory of art history. And it does. And that time is over. Thank God.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk about the Met. You had three things at the Met you wanted people to see. One was already on somebody else's list, so we'll forget that, but we'll talk about the Kouros and the Roman wall paintings at the Met.

[Jerry Saltz]

What was the first?

[Alison Stewart]

The Kouros or no. Anyway, tell us about the Roman wall paintings.

[Jerry Saltz]

Oh, Roman wall paintings. Go into the Roman. Oh, the Kiros and the Roman. I'm an idiot. I'm pronouncing it right. And I. It's like saying Van Gogh. Okay. Instead of Van Gogh. Anyway, go. The Met is fantastic because the minute you walk into it, you're seeing art. Unlike the Louvre, which you have to go through a stupid glass. Have you been there?

[Alison Stewart]

Yes.

[Jerry Saltz]

A glass pyramid down a single escalator. You buy a ticket and you're instantaneously lost in a basement.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah. You feel like you're going to a mall. You're going down an escalator.

[Jerry Saltz]

It's like going to a mall, which we love, but Jesus. At the Met, you walk in, you go left, you look at Rome. At right, you look at Egypt. Upstairs, you look at Western Civilization. If you go to the left to see Greece and Rome, you will walk through a gallery to see the Kouros, which is a large standing sculpture made in about 500 BC by the Greeks. The Greeks woke up in the middle of the Mediterranean back then, and they looked at Egypt and Palestine and Italy and all the countries around them. And it was busy there. You could sail to Barcelona in 10 days. And they traded constantly. Everybody knew everybody. The Greeks woke up and they realized they were incredibly advanced and they had these ideas, and they started making this figurative, naturalistic work of. Here is a sculpture with one foot striding forward. That is Egypt, which never changed. Which was perfect and never changed for 5,000 years. You can still conjure up an Egyptian cat sculpture, which is unbeatable. Or those Great Sphinxes in Greece. There was suddenly motion in the figure stepping forward from immortality to mortality to the shadowless realm of Egypt, to the shadows of our world. And it is amazing.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Steve. Hi, Steve. Thanks for calling Olivet.

[Steve]

Hi, Elson. Thank you for taking my call. I was thrilled when I just popped onto your broadcast because you were talking about the Depaulo Creation and Expulsion, which is a piece of art that I present on my tours. I'm a tour guide at the Met. It's a very small piece in two separate sections, the Creation and the Expulsion. And it's amazing how much is in that small piece. One of the things, a couple of things I love about it is it looks very modern because the creation on the left is a circle. And it looks abstract in a way compared to the right hand part of the picture. But the thing that's so special to me, and maybe to your guests as well, when I looked at the Expulsion part, where the angel, who is completely nude, which is very unusual, it's considered perhaps as sympathetic to the Terrible thing that's happened to Adam and Eve. But the artist has made Adam and Eve look back at the angel as if they're saying, oh, please don't send us out. We'll be good. We won't make a mistake again. And that tiny little picture has that wonderful emotional power, at least for me, so that I wanted to share, but I know I don't probably have enough time. Go ahead.

[Jerry Saltz]

That's beautiful. And I also hope that I can come to one of your tours someday. Dee. I am Mia. Jerry Saltz on Instagram, people follow me.

[Alison Stewart]

You have a Van Gogh. I didn't say Van Gogh, but Van Gogh. But you put the MoMA and the Met. Why did you put down two different places? Is there a special thing you want people to see or just want people to see Van Gogh?

[Jerry Saltz]

I want people to see Van Gogh. I want. Here's what I want you to see. When you look at a Picasso, you're seeing everything he wants you to see on one surface. Vagina, penis, belly button, anus, buttocks, face. Whatever. You're seeing it all outlaid, laid out. In Van Gogh, we see surface. What do you see when you see a Van Gogh? You see a picture of some sunflowers or a landscape. But then shut up. What are you really seeing? You're seeing paint strokes, surface, color, texture. Every line, every mark, every motion is equally important to every other one. And that is the beginning of the end of hierarchical composition. And I want anybody to have a good time with Van Gogh. And I'll finish only by saying Van Gogh was Lifestyles of the Poor and Famous. He was very well known in his lifetime, but very poor. But every artist is poor. You're poor, I'm poor. We hate that. But Van Gogh was very well known to all of the artists in Paris and elsewhere, and he sold two paintings, and he got a very, very positive review by Roberta Smith, my wife, the equivalent art critic in the New York Times of that time. And his brother worked at the Gagosian Gallery, the most famous gallery of that period.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Tina. Hi, Tina, calling in from Brooklyn. How are you?

[Judith]

Hi.

[Tina]

I'm good. Thank you for taking my call. And I just want to say how much I appreciate the work that both of you do. So my favorite piece of art in New York City is the Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau at MoMA. And when I was a child, I grew up in West Berlin. When I was a child, my dad built a dollhouse for me, and that piece was in one of the rooms. So I grew up looking at it and then when I came to New York, I was so excited to be able to see it in person. And every time I go to moma, I visit it like an old friend. And what I love about it so much is the light. So the painting is by Henri Rousseau, who was a self taught artist in Paris in the, you know, early 20th century. And I myself am a self taught artist, so maybe that's another relationship that I feel. And this painting is of a sleeping nomad who is sleeping under the full moon in a desert type of landscape. And she has her instrument by her side and. And there is a lion who is sniffing her kind of. And she is unaware of it because she is sleeping. And this lion is very peaceful. And the moment is magical and the light is magical.

[Alison Stewart]

Thank you so much, Tina, for calling. We do appreciate it. We're running out of time, so I'll give you three. You had Kara Walker, Fragonard, the Progress of Love and the High Line I.

[Jerry Saltz]

Wanted to talk about.

[Alison Stewart]

Which one do you want to talk about?

[Jerry Saltz]

I'll do Kara Walker because she made the greatest public sculpture of the 21st century. It was called a subtlety. It was. You saw it? I saw it. It was in an abandoned or a decrepit, a derelict sugar factory in Brooklyn put on by Ann Pasternak, now the great first female director. Brooklyn Museum of an encyclopedic art museum. Brooklyn Museum. And everybody came before that sculpture and just went into shock. What was your response to it?

[Alison Stewart]

Oh, it was wild. I was speechless, actually.

[Jerry Saltz]

Yeah, it rendered us speechless.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah.

[Jerry Saltz]

I thought it was a great sphinx, all white, made out of sugar and.

[Alison Stewart]

It had like the Aunt Jemima head to it. Yeah, right.

[Jerry Saltz]

Yeah. I mean, it hit you in the face and took you by the throat and then coaxed you into like hypnosis. I always thought that that should have been placed on a huge float and driven across the United States. Just unbelievable. And I would say that one of works of art now at MOMA is a huge drawing that she made in 2017, immediately after the long American night resumed in America of called Christ's entry into journalism. I'll just wrap it up by saying it's very large, it's a drawing, there's no color in it or very little of lynching. Minstrel shows trump the KKK blackface, plantation owners, little Nells mammys, a panoply of chaos, sex, incredible endurance, graphic genius and our long, beautiful, tremendous American story. In captured, we will have all of.

[Alison Stewart]

Jerry's 10 suggestions for you so you can add them to your list. Jerry, thank you for thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it.

[Jerry Saltz]

I loved it. Thank you. Alison.

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