Art Is Life by Jerry Saltz review - an entertaining, informative, and, at times, profoundly affecting read

Saltz tends to overplay his background as a long-distance truck driver (it would be more accurate to say he was an art courier), and he also likes to say he did not write a word until he turned 40 (the man isn't uneducated). However, there can be no doubt that he does indeed write about the visual arts with a general audience in mind, and a desire to turn the naysayers or simply disinterested to the wondrous world of art and artists. His prose is spirited, even punky, his paragraphs every so often peppered with swearing.

Art is Life follows Saltz's How to Be an Artist, a brief but not entirely dispensable collection of aphorisms and fragments aimed primarily at the emerging artist who might need something inspirational on the bedside table. This latest work is a more substantial affair, comprising previously published essays, reviews, and occasional interviews. The collection is introduced with a piece during which Saltz explores Theodore Gericault's "The Raft of the Medusa" (1818-1819), a painting he first fell in love with as a 19-year-old. It is an impassioned plea about the power of art to change someone's DNA, although more often than not we don't how or why that happens. "The most moving art," writes Saltz, "as always, deals in ambiguity, unexpected surprises, undermined expectations, complexity, interior drama." This is followed by an essay, dated 2017, in which Saltz describes his failed attempts at being an artist himself.

"Every artist does battle, every day, with [doubt]. I lost the battle. It doomed me. But it also made me the critic I am today."

From there, beginning with a section sub-titled "The World Before and During (1999-2001)", Art is Life surveys the big names, their work, and their contributions to society: Andy Warhol, Alice Neel, Norman Rockwell, Jasper Johns, Basquiat, Bear's Heart, to name but a few. This is an almost entirely North American chronicle, which is understandable, though it is more than a shame that it contains not a single mention of a First Nations artist from Australia. Maybe an Australian gallery or museum could help him make amends.

Some of the pieces in Art is Life are just a little facile - for example, "Is there great art on Instagram?" and "I got kicked off Facebook for posting images of Medieval Art" - but as an overall experience this is an entertaining, informative, and, at times, profoundly affecting read.

Saltz remains in love with art and artists, even if he hates the commerce of it, which, to his mind, is bloated, gross, and almost terminally damaging. He is sufficiently self-reflective and vulnerable (and, it must be said, confident) to admit when he believes that his original assessment of a particular artist or show was wrong. Somewhat remarkably for a male of the species, he also appears able to turn down his ego to focus on the work in question.

For readers who are artists, there is much in Art is Life that is helpful. About the abstract expressionist Philip Guston (1913-1980), Saltz writes, "The lesson of his career is that, in order to really be themselves, all artists must find their inner Guston: an artist who forgoes easy answers, who looks for and channels doubt and not-knowing. An artist like this understands that he or she isn't really controlling their art - that on some cosmic level the art controls the artist. All great artists must be able to create a machine that can make things that they cannot predict."

Despite these illuminating - and motivating - passages, there is a melancholic current that runs at the core of this book. Perhaps that comes from the fact that Saltz tracks the art world's response to the September 11 terror attacks, the Black Lives Matter movement, the rise and, despite everything, dire threat of Trumpism, and half the population's ongoing battle to be recognised as artists of note and be included in major public collections. Perhaps the undercurrent also comes from the fact that so many artists struggle with the practical matters of the world. How to pay the bills? How to survive the tumult of health crises such as the AIDS/HIV epidemic, during which so many artists lost their lives? How to step away from the devilish warmth of addiction?

Saltz shows that making art always matters. Indeed, after a civilization crumbles, often all that remains is the work - the sheer, hard, mysterious, sometimes dangerous labour - of artists.