Saltz has been the senior art critic for “New York” magazine for 18 years as well as for the magazine’s online site “Vulture”.  He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for criticism.  He was born in Oak Park, Illinois and grew up in River Forest, the same upscale suburb of around 10,000 souls where I grew up.  Six year older than him, I never crossed his path.

The inspiration for this volume with its subtly rainbow-like cover began with an article in “New York” magazine in which Saltz provided 33 ‘rules’ for taking the reader “from clueless amateur to generational talent.”  The article proved to be so popular that he expanded it to 63 rules for this book, organizing the rules into six steps:  Step One: You Are a Total Amateur: Things to Think About Before you Even Get Started; Step Two:  How to Actually Begin: An Instruction Manual For the Studio; Step Three:  Learn to Think Like an Artist: This is the Fun Part; Step Four: Enter the Art World: A Guide to the Snake Pit; Step Five:  Survive the Art World: Psychic Strategies for Dealing with the Ugliness (inside and out); Step Six:  Attain Galactic Brain: Cosmic Epigrams from Better Heads and Mine.  Along the way, photographs of artists and their work from Agnes Martin to David Hockney, from Manet to Vivian Maier brighten the text.  Saltz provides an exercise at the end of many of the rules, e.g. “Write a simple 100 word statement about your work.”

In his Introduction, Saltz asks the question “What is art, anyway?”  He provides one answer in a quote from the artist Carroll Dunham: “Art is a craft-based tool for the study of the consciousness.”  Saltz goes on to write that art is a visual language, a means of expression that conveys the most primal emotions; it’s a survival strategy in which the creative process is inexplicable, inspired, crystallizing.   He summarizes in the final sentence of the introduction:  “Art is just a container that you pour yourself into.”

This is a thought-provoking and fascinating read, written by a man who emerged from a terrible childhood and who didn’t find his calling until late in life becoming a much-heralded art critic.  If you’re considering leaping into art-making or are just, like me, a committed art museum, gallery, and studio visitor, this is a fine book to enjoy and to learn from.