A saboteur in the house of art and a comedienne in the house of art theory, Lawler has spent three decades documenting the secret life of art. Functioning as a kind of one-woman CSI unit, she has photographed pictures and objects in collectors' homes, in galleries, on the walls of auction houses, and off the walls, in museum storage.

Jerry Saltz

Jerry Saltz

Art Auction Collectors Decades Galleries Homes House Houses Kind Life Museum Objects Off Photographed Pictures Secret She Spent Storage Theory Three Unit Walls

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The art world is molting - some would say melting. Galleries are closing; museums are scaling back.

— Jerry Saltz

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Auction houses run a rigged game. They know exactly how many people will be bidding on a work and exactly who they are. In a gallery, works of art need only one person who wants to pay for them.

— Jerry Saltz

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After its hothouse incubation in the seventies, appropriation breathed important new life into art. This life flowered spectacularly over the decades - even if it's now close to aesthetic kudzu.

— Jerry Saltz

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A sad fact of life lately at the Museum of Modern Art is that when it comes to group shows of contemporary painting from the collection, the bar has been set pretty low.

— Jerry Saltz

Now people look at 'The Scream' or Van Gogh's 'Irises' or a Picasso and see its new content: money. Auction houses inherently equate capital with value.

— Jerry Saltz

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