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Art Is Life
- Icons & Iconoclasts, Visionaries & Vigilantes, & Flashes of Hope in the Night
- Narrated by: Jerry Saltz, Mark Bramhall
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
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Art Is Life
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Publisher's Summary
From the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of How to Be an Artist, a deliciously digestible survey of the art world in turbulent times.
Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists, and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary readers to fine art as few critics have. An early champion of forgotten and overlooked women artists, he has also celebrated the pioneering work of African American, LGBTQ+, and other long-marginalized creators. Sotheby's Institute of Art has called him, simply, 'the art critic'.
Now, in Art Is Life, Jerry Saltz draws on two decades of work to offer a real-time survey of contemporary art as a barometer of our times. Chronicling a period punctuated by dramatic turning points—from the cultural reset of 9/11 to the rolling social crises of today—Saltz traces how visionary artists have both documented and challenged the culture.
Art Is Life offers Saltz's eye-opening appraisals of trailblazers like Kara Walker, Hilma af Klint and Jasper Johns; provocateurs like Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Marina Abramovic; and visionaries like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Saltz celebrates landmarks like the Obama portraits by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, writes searchingly about disturbing moments such as the Ankara gallery assassination, and offers surprising takes on figures from Thomas Kinkade to Kim Kardashian. And he shares stories of his own haunted childhood, his time as a 'failed artist', and his epiphanies upon beholding work by Botticelli, Delacroix, and the cave painters of Niaux.
With his signature blend of candour and conviction, Jerry Saltz argues in Art Is Life for the importance of the fearless artist, reminding us that art is a kind of channeled voice of human experience, a necessary window onto our times. The result is an openhearted and irresistibly digestible appraisal by one of our most important cultural observers.
What listeners say about Art Is Life
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Desmond Toomey
- 14-03-2024
I no a lot more about art 😀
fun read I be listening to this again and again I think l become a artist
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Robert
- 25-02-2023
Wonderful. Personal and informative
I hadn’t encountered Jerry Saltz before, or at least I had come across him in various art documentaries but not paid much attention. This book is a fantastic survey of his writing on art and how he became an art critic after a challenging upbringing. His essays on art works and artists are wonderful, if perhaps overly US centric. Overall a great listen.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Johnny
- 08-01-2024
The book is good but aweful reading. Jerry should have read the whole thing.
I dislike the reading of the other narrator. He seems uninterested and the reading is bad. The voice is not great either. Buyers keep in mind this book may be one you want to read rather than listen to.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Maxine Glanger
- 29-09-2023
A masterpiece.
A distillation of the life-changing power of art in a story told with honesty, humility and humour.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Jollypenno
- 20-07-2023
Even better than expected
I've never been interested in art. I only listened to this audiobook because of a fascinating interview with Jerry Saltz.
I enjoyed this book even more than the interview, even though it's so different from what I usually listen to.
I'm now interested in art.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Angela Chauvin
- 17-11-2022
How to be with Art- Expanding How to be an Artist
I learnt a lot from Jerry’s first book about how to be an artist. But this book expands that knowledge to include a way of being with Art. It’s not an encyclopaedic, academic art history and theory book. It’s not dry or dense. There are selected names and dates here, but I was listening to something else. Those details are here to scaffold a more wholistic teaching: what makes art breathe and gives it a heartbeat. Risk, sacrifice, integrity, devotion, community. For me, these are the only things an artist really needs and the only thing an art reader and lover needs.
The Artworld context is observed here, but I appreciated also observing that- although there is interdependency between artists and the artworld- all the art world noise is what it is- and does what it does - and has little to do with what drives the production or reading of great art on an individual level. The artworld context of art is interesting in itself and does determine to a degree what we have access to and what is financially sustained, and sometimes, how cultural knowledge changes over time, even how historical work becomes contemporary for us.
When writing like this happens, kind of like a cultural meta critique- we can see the parts of the whole and where we fit in. Ultimately cultural knowledge is retained or rejected or reproduced over time by a broader collective and irritated by forces great and small.
Here are the stories of those varied and complex forces and values that compel the greater artworld collective, you, and individual artists, and their shapeshifting contexts.
This is generous writing; this is Jerry’s personal Artworld. It’s a radically vulnerable sharing that creates a container for you to connect with your values and your edges, and then encourages you to risk expressive modes and receiving and critical modes that access your boundless potential as a human and a medium. It is inclusive.
It works on a macro scale by delivering micro biographies and poetic selections of useable artistic wisdom. Unlike his first book, which was like a recipe book, Jerry doesn’t preach or prescribe here, he just takes you on a walk, a private tour of his artworld heart. He’s telling the stories of life and lives that teach by example. That’s all you need. Just go for a walk with him, look and listen, then take that generosity home and work to share creation or reception.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 16-02-2023
I loved this book! So much insight!
Jerry is a treasure! They way he talks about art…writes about life…yes, definitely art is life! I feel I need to listen to this again and again!
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- Jonathon Britton
- 23-06-2024
Excellent
A collection of absolutely excellent essays on art by the author. Very insightful and Highly recommended.
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