Roberta Smith Still Has Notes

0:02Your taste, your sensibility is much more flexible than a lot of people allow. One thing you have to do as a critic is be prepared to like fall for stuff you don't think you should like.

0:21Roberta Smith:I'm Ben Davis and this is the Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News.

0:31Roberta Smith:Roberta Smith is the exemplar of popular art criticism. For almost four decades, Smith was a familiar voice at the New York Times, serving for many of those years as co-lead art critic. Both feared and revered, she is known above all for a close-looking, precise description, and a style that's accessible but serious. In 2019, she won the Rabkin Foundation Award for lifetime achievement. Smith moved to New York in the late 1960s, studying at the Whitney's independent study program and meeting her first mentor, the sculptor Donald Judd. In the early 1970s, she worked at the Museum of Modern Art and Paula Cooper Gallery, then began writing for various art magazines.

1:12Roberta Smith:In the 1980s, she started writing for larger audiences at the Village Voice and then for the Times, starting in 1986. Smith retired two years ago, but this week, She is back in the conversation because of a film called House of Criticism, which is about her and her husband, New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz, and it's making its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival. I took that as my cue to interview someone who has shaped the worlds of art making and art writing so deeply. Smith was nice enough to talk to me about her method, what she thinks people get wrong about the art world, and what she's looking at now.

1:49Roberta Smith:Well, Roberta Smith, thank you very much for doing this interview with me today. I'm very excited to do it. Well, thank you for asking me. So you retired a couple years ago. You were the, of course, famous longtime co-lead critic for the New York Times. What have you been up to? Are you still out and about seeing galleries? Well, four months after I retired, I broke my foot, which really underscored retirement in a kind of uncomfortable way. So I suddenly stopped going to the Times because I didn't work there anymore. And I stopped going to galleries and sort of had a very long dark night of the soul, I would say.

2:25Like, you give up something like The Times and what that job meant to me and how it identified me. And it's a shock. I will put it any other way. I sort of didn't know who I was. You know, I used to always say that I didn't know if I'd ever write after I left The Times, that I felt so, I don't know. I was really in a kind of slot or a place where it seemed to work for me. And I really loved the dynamic of working with editors and seeing shows and writing quickly and being in print. And all of that was like this wonderful little triangle.

3:03Roberta Smith:And a routine, I imagine. It was a routine, yeah. It sort of determined my life. And I liked working with editors. I liked feedback. I liked being edited. And they're very much a part of the process. for Times writers, I think. It was my experience. Was there any part of you that was relieved? I know you said you didn't even know how you would look at art when you weren't thinking about what you would review each week. Actually, I'd forgotten about that. It was time for me to go. I was whatever I was, 75, and I had been there a long time. I was having more and more difficulty meeting deadlines, so that didn't work well.

3:43Roberta Smith:It's punishing. Yeah, it didn't work well with anyone. And I wanted to see what was left, you know, what I had left for me to do. I was thinking, well, I could go work at an animal shelter or, you know, thinking of something radically different. And I really didn't know. I sort of just came to a halt. Everything came to a halt. And I think I haven't quite unraveled the significance of the broken foot. I think that it has some. So then I took on a couple of big writing pieces for me, and they took forever. I took forever to do them. I mean, people were about to shoot me. I wrote an essay on Uman, who's having a show at Bard, opening at the end of this month, actually, who isn't very well-known, although I think she's a terrific artist and very symptomatic of the times.

4:41And then I went in the opposite direction and wrote a catalog essay for the John show that just happened at Gagosian. And both of them were kind of amazing because it was like, oh, okay, you can write, even without editors, although you're a bit too slow right now.

4:59Roberta Smith:Well, that's interesting because you had to be so fast before. So is it like you got a voice in your head saying that you have to do something totally different? Well, it was totally different. I'm not sure I was really a fast writer. I always think I'm a slow writer that I can respond well to pressure. So once the pressure changes, there's no pressure like we need it for Friday, you know. But anyway, both of those essays are really satisfying to do. in the Johns essay, which is in print, in this fabulous catalog they did of the show, because it produces everything on the show, plus installation shots, plus it reproduces the show at Costelli in 1976.

5:39I don't know if you are aware of this. Johns' crosshatch paintings bloom large in my New York experience.

5:46Roberta Smith:Oh, yeah. No, I wasn't aware of that. How so? Well, I saw the 76 show, and I really was knocked out by it, really. and flummoxed. And I just think those are sort of arguably his greatest paintings. And certainly his most painterly and in some ways intuitive. That show is just amazing to me to see. So it sounds like these writing projects are kind of passion projects for you. I mean, I guess I always wonder that there's such an industry around art now. I always think that it's like when people don't have any business interest in it, if they're still interested in art, that means there's something there, you know?

6:25Ben, I'm shocked. I don't know why, but I'm completely shocked by that. Because most people in the art world have a kind of marginal business interest. I mean, I don't think any of us is in it for the money.

6:38Roberta Smith:Sure, yeah. Or most of us aren't in it for the money. No, yeah, sort of an aspiration of it being a career or something like that, yeah. Well, I just think there's a kind of satisfaction that we get that is unequaled, if you have that feeling for it. And I think everybody potentially has that feeling for it if they give themselves a chance. Now, the Johns thing especially turned into a passion project because this is somebody I've written about a few times and I had never quite thought about it so much, had so much time to be with it. And I also had the benefit of, you can see it on the shelves there, Roberta Bernstein's Catalogue Resoné.

7:14And I just went over it and over it and over it and I just got so many ideas from it. The catalog resume fell apart. I'd like to point that out to Yale.

7:22Roberta Smith:But anyway, they don't make books like they used to. A little bit of criticism for the bookbinder. But anyway, and now we've got, you know, a couple of interviews connected to this movie thing that's happening at the end of this week. And after that, I don't know. So you still observe the art world, though? I know you have thoughts about the gallery scene right now. Well, the gallery scene is where I've spent most of my professional life. That and in museum, certain museum exhibitions. I hate the demonization of art galleries. I think it's really wrong and inaccurate. And I'm not crazy about the big four, if you want to call them.

8:08But, you know, they've done some amazing shows. and we live in a time of giantism, which is very unfortunate for just about anything you can name on every front. So the art world is not exempt from that. But there's hundreds of galleries that aren't part of that circuit.

8:29Roberta Smith:In preparation for this, I went back and read some of your village voice writing and there was one from the 80s that I read, I think, talking about overproduction. You were talking about David Salley's show and talking about, man, this is like way too much work here. And I was thinking how apt that seemed and how quaint because the scale is just incomparable since then. I know. Well, there's more of everything than there ever was before in history. So art isn't exempt. You know, I always say to people, if you can be anything else than an artist, be that. Don't be an artist if you feel you have options, because real artists are people who don't have options, who can only do that.

9:16Roberta Smith:The demonization of galleries or the commercial side of the artwork, where do you think that comes from? Oh, I just think that a lot of people have decided that dealers are kind of evil. And I'm sure there are enough dealers who can be cited as evidence. but I think that dealers are in this very weird position which is they take something that an artist makes that the artist considers invaluable and they convert it into cash that's their job and their job secondarily although I actually think it's the primary job is to be in charge of a space that is part of a larger conversation to which we all have access free of charge and they're the main conduit of art in any given city.

10:08And therefore, I don't know, I think they're amazing. I also dislike sectioning the art world into more or less evil professions. Artists, critics, curators, collectors, dealers. I think they can all be done really badly and really dishonestly and they can be done excellently. And there's an element of creativity involved in all of these activities. You know, in galleries, in the time I've been here, I've taken on a lot of the jobs at museums. I mean, there have been great historic shows. But I think right now to demonize galleries, dealers as a group, is really naive. Think about the art world without them.

10:55You know, Ken Johnson, I should say it was really fun to write The Times with Ken Johnson, and he was the critic I felt closest to. But Ken went and wrote for the Boston Globe for a couple of years and came back to The Times, and he said, there are no galleries up there. There's no art world. You can't have it without them, without these basically even now small ma and pa businesses where a few people are making their own decisions about what they want to put on view for the rest of us to look at and think about. I think being a dealer is incredibly difficult. And sure, there are temptations. You know, a lot of money passes through your hands and you have to be very disciplined.

11:41I think one thing that doesn't get said enough is that galleries have lifespans and they have different lifespans according to the people that run them. you know like metro pictures that was a specific i forget what that was 40 years yeah something like 40 year run something like that and then they decided to end it it's so interesting so you're

12:04Roberta Smith:retired and you're still like looking in at the art system not just the art like thinking about thinking about its health i've been in it since more or less getting less and less naive as i proceeded but i've i've been going to galleries since 1968 very naively at first that's why i remember the John show because it was one of the first shows where I went back more than once and was really kind of like oh well this is something different what is up with this guy right now but like I say Jerry and I've kind of lived our whole lives just going to galleries and talking to people at the desk and talking to dealers or talking to just the receptionists because there There are all kinds of great people who start out at the reception desks at galleries.

12:52So I have my own distortion. I idealize it. I romanticize it. But it's still the same. It's still very much the same if you go on certain levels. Well, it's funny.

13:05Roberta Smith:I was going to ask you, just to get at the Roberta Smith origin story, I was going to ask you about Paula Cooper Gallery because it was one of your first jobs, right? Did that affect the way you approached art? uh probably i mean i think paula was very eclectic loose i think the way she approached art was almost kind of mysterious and if you looked over her stable at any given point there's a tremendous range when i worked for paula which was beginning in 1972 alan shields was probably still supporting the gallery he was the first young artist that i remember sort of selling like crazy for a while.

13:43And I just thought she had just a really interesting eye, you know, to the other extreme of people like Judd and Andre. She liked their work. She respected them very much. Later on, she did actually represent Judd for a while. I don't know about Andre. Maybe now. I can't remember. I think there was a kind of laissez-faire in that gallery where it didn't have a kind of house style.

14:11Roberta Smith:Yeah. I remember when I left Paula, I left to become a full-time critic, which wasn't full-time because you didn't make your money at it. But anyway, I remember Mel Bauchter saying to me, well, now that you don't work for that gallery anymore, I can speak to you. So you could see that there was this sense of opposition to, you think about, you know, he's represented by Sonnebend and everybody that was there for 10 years. Right. And then the Germans arrived. So that like completely. And you think that the openness of it is strength because openness to new things rather than a sharply defined. I'm not sure if an openness to new things, it's an openness.

14:51It's just an understanding that I know you're going to ask me about ideology. So we all have one. I didn't mean to say I didn't have one. But I just think your affinities, whatever you want to call it, your taste, your sensibility is much more flexible than a lot of people allow. One thing you have to do as a critic is be prepared to like fall for stuff you don't think you should like. You know, I knew Judd. I was sort of had a certain level of training working for him. And I came out of that very, very narrow.

15:27Roberta Smith:Well, speaking of ideology, I was going to ask you about Donald Judd because you did his catalog, Resoné, right? I worked on it. You worked on it. I started it. Very early. This is like one of your very first jobs. This is mid-70s. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody wrote a letter to the editor of Arts Magazine. Remember that? When Judd was writing and said he was ideological, and he said, I don't mind being an ideologue if I write. I'm much looser. I think that you sort of take it on a case-by-case basis, like, how am I responding to this? And can you actually reconcile liking this with liking that? And the answer is probably not.

16:03You can't.

16:04Roberta Smith:I know people probably think of Donald Judd as the great minimalist, very rigorous style. Almost rigor is the definition of it, but also very influential on you as a critic, correct? Because he was a writer of some note who wrote about all kinds of things, right? Well, Judd hated minimalism. which is to his credit. And, you know, all these so-called movements, they only have really a few artists who are practicing them at the highest level. I mean, specific objects is not a precursor to minimalism. You know, specific objects are much more varied and eclectic. I mean, you had Richard Archbagger, Lucas Samaras, George Ortman, Alfred Jensen.

16:46That was an amazing group of artists. And he connected them in terms of the way they used material and the kinds of objects they made, which he thought probably were non-illusionistic. I mean, that was his big bugaboo, was this illusion of space.

17:05Roberta Smith:Truth to materials. Yeah, truth to materials and truth to the object as object. So I don't think you can define him by or hang him on minimalism. But as a writer, what do you think you took from him? because I've read you say you like really dug into his writing. I read everything he wrote. I read the yellow book because I retyped it. I returned the yellow book. Really good way to absorb something. It's completely a journalistic method. I talked to some other critic about it and they said, oh yeah, we used to always do that. Before there was a yellow book, I went and took all these piles of arts magazines and typed all of his reviews back into manuscript form.

17:48You barely had to think. It just sort of went through my brain. And I think that the plainness of his writing and the relatively, I think, conversational nature of it. And also, he was very judgmental. I mean, he always had opinions. I don't think I was nearly as judgmental as Judd because he had this, you know, scheme, this program. And he could tell when people were.

18:13Roberta Smith:With the program. With the program or not. And by degrees, you know. Well, so what do you think you took away from it? Some people might accuse you of being a formalist. I'm not sure I would, but I mean, like, his writing, there's a lot of rigor in its attention to materials and form. Yeah. He wrote a great review about who chooses the vinyl that lines airplanes. So he understood subject matter when he was there. But I don't know if I'm a formalist or not. I probably am. I'm not that interested in narrative. Right. Like backstory, I guess you'd say. Because backstory is a huge part of the contemporary art.

18:49Yeah, I'm interested in what you can see and what you get from looking. If there's a whole backstory, some of it's very interesting, some of it is necessary. But in the end, you know, you go through that and you still have to come back to just what you're looking at. Because not everybody's out there collecting the backstory. So I just want to start with looking and, you know, what it brings up for me.

19:15Roberta Smith:You have talked many times about going to the Village Voice, a big moment in your career. How'd that come about? And what was the, it's kind of a mythical time in the Village Voice's life for me. What was it like? You have to remember I was sort of out of it wherever I was. So I wasn't really part of the voice. I had a good friend who was a writer and who said, if you really want to be a critic, you have to get out of the art world. Right. What did you mean by that? You have to find a readership. And what he didn't say, what I discovered was that there's an immediacy to a place like The Voice.

19:51I've said this so many times. You're in print while the art you're writing about is on view. You know, art magazines are six weeks behind what the art world is looking at. If you're lucky. So that pressure was really intense. And it was like a kind of truth serum. It's like, I can't think about what anybody else is going to think about my writing. I have these people that are doing me the favor of reading me, and there's a certain responsibility there. And I just have to go forth, you know, be as honest as I can. I have to write about stuff that I know about. I have to write about things that I probably know very little about, but that catch my eye in a certain way and excite me.

20:36And I think other people can become excited in looking at this. The voice was great. I don't know. People would talk to me on the street and you would get reactions. You know, I mean, the times was that way too, but.

20:47Roberta Smith:Sure, like times a thousand. Yeah. Everybody writing online probably has this, but it wasn't so usual. Yes and no. I mean, I think writing online is very immediate, but you also, it's very fragmented and in weird ways, isn't an audience. Like that kind of anonymous audience that you're talking about, it's not necessarily might not be the art audience. The online audience is very self-selecting, is what I'd say. Well, I mean, anybody reading me in The Voice or The Times is self-selective. You know, there's always that. Yes, that's true. And as a writer, I think you have to take for granted a certain level of interest.