The Art Newspaper

Saltz sob story

Web only
Published online 8 Feb 10

Tino Sehgal's performance art journey at the Guggenheim has been provoking a range of responses from visitors, who are led through the museum's empty spiral by actors that engage them in philosophical discussions. But in perhaps the first example of a viewer having an effect on the art, rather than vice versa, New York magazine critic Jerry Saltz unhappily related this weekend in his review of the show that he actually made the work of art cry. “I had been so slow taking notes and asking questions to the perfect little girl who greeted me and started the conversation that, after passing me to the next person, she had broken down in tears… It is also the only time in my life I ever wrote a letter of abject apology to a work of art.”

Comments