![‘House Of Criticism’ Review: Jerry Saltz & Roberta Smith Make Criticism Feel Like A Calling [Tribeca]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/12110155/Houseofcriticism-melindapinecone-2_clean_16x9.jpg "‘House Of Criticism’ Review: Jerry Saltz & Roberta Smith Make Criticism Feel Like A Calling [Tribeca]")
About a third of the way through Alison Chernick’s wonderful little documentary “House of Criticism,” Jerry Saltz, the current New York Magazine art critic and former Village Voice critic, sums up the act of criticism quite well. While speaking with the magazine’s food critic, Adam Platt, over coffee, he says, “The more art I see, the better I feel.” For anyone who’s dedicated even a portion of their life to artistic critique, myself included, it’s hard not to see yourself in this winning portrait of the marriage and lives of Saltz and his wife, former New York Times art critic Roberta Smith.
The critic’s paradox is at the center of the film. We seek to write about mediums that often transcend the written word. That, and as Saltz and Smith are quick to note, there’s nothing worse than the act of writing, but there’s really nothing better, either. Their lives are broad and busy, going to upwards of 30 shows a week. But they are also insular and frustrating, laboring over words, ideas, and editorial notes. It’s somewhat refreshing to see that it never gets easier, even in the upper echelons of criticism.
But as Smith laments later in the film, criticism has perhaps too often turned to synopsis and description rather than actual critique. So, in that spirit, Chernick’s documentary doesn’t break any formal or narrative rules; it’s fairly typical, allowing the married couple to structure the film. It traces their early lives, Saltz as a truck driver and Smith as an acolyte of minimalist artist Donald Judd. Neither has the type of academic credentialing or highbrow tastes one might expect. Platt tells Saltz that art critics are often too professorial, but as they are quick to correct, they aren’t academics. Smith, at one point, compares the act of writing criticism to an artisanal profession.
This idea informs their worldview. As they explain, art should make you feel, and their work translates those feelings into both words and judgment. They are informed but never snooty about their appreciation for art. When they walk through a large tactile exhibit of cardboard computers and Call of Duty players, presumably invoking something about militarism and technology, a piece that Smith describes quite derogatorily as “masculine,” they come upon a class of high school students, with Saltz asking them their opinions and, even more shockingly, caring what they have to say.
When the film finally settles into something resembling traditional narrative structures, it’s much later, as Smith contemplates retirement from the Times. A less ramshackle piece would, perhaps, use her pending retirement as a framing device, rather than a coda. Yet I couldn’t help but fall in love with the seemingly mundane that’s presented here: Saltz’s love of a Big Gulp as his vice of choice, and Smith’s fury and annoyance when she’s given editorial notes, something that even she admits she hasn’t gotten in a while. These moments peel back the curtain into what, from the outside, could look glamorous.
What Chernick ends up chronicling is also the death of the type of upper-middle-class life built around the arts. While Smith and Saltz are probably doing fine money-wise, it’s fascinating to hear Saltz explain that while they might be the two foremost art critics in New York City, that doesn’t mean they can actually afford art. Instead, as he presents several forgeries and copies that he’s acquired over the years, they live relatively humble lives, hunched over computers, hoping to make a difference in their insular worlds. It’s all the more shocking, then, when their goddaughter Lena Dunham makes a cameo appearance at the end of the film, a false note in a film with very few others.
Something the critic always has to contend with is the snapshot nature of criticism. It’s the invocation of a moment when you come into contact with a piece, sometimes presented as an objective judgment, but always filtered through subjective experience. As any critic knows, it’s easy to be wrong, less easy to say so when your first impression is in print for the world to see. When Smith writes a piece entitled “I Was Wrong About Cecily Brown,” in regards to the contemporary painter whose work Smith has criticized previously, it’s a fascinating lens into how they view criticism and the ways they find themselves open to the notion of “radical revision,” letting their feelings and critiques evolve alongside their lives.
So what purpose does criticism serve? The artist Mickalene Thomas, in conversation with Saltz midway through the film, puts it most succinctly. She says, “Sometimes I may put something out there that’s not that good, and there should be people who point that out.” It’s a wonderful insight from someone on the other side of the artist/critic divide. Saltz and Smith are quite good at delineating the good from the bad, and “House of Criticism” is equally attuned to finding the real. Not, perhaps, in the revelatory sense, but in its quiet depiction of a type of monastic critical pursuit. [B+]
