Holland Cotter, Times Art Critic, Wins Pulitzer Prize

By Dave Itzkoff

Forgive the self-reference for a moment: Holland Cotter, an art critic for The New York Times, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, it was announced Monday afternoon. In its citation, the Pulitzer committee said it was honoring Mr. Cotter, who has been a staff critic at The Times since 1998, for “his wide ranging reviews of art, from Manhattan to China, marked by acute observation, luminous writing and dramatic storytelling.In a speech to Times staffers this afternoon, Mr. Cotter said, Esoteric is something I just haven’t explored yet; weird is what makes me want to get up in the morning.

A Times Topics page on Holland Cotter can be found here. Among some of his recent pieces we highly recommend are “Buddha’s Caves, from July 6, which chronicles his visit to Mogaoku, the Chinese Buddhist caves on the edge of the Gobi desert; and “Artist’s Life: Cut, Nip and Tuck, from Monday’s Times, in which he reviews “I Am Art: An Expression of the Visual & Artistic Process of Plastic Surgery at Apexart in TriBeCa.

We also highly endorse “Young Artists, Caught in the Act from April 10, a review of The Generational: Younger Than Jesus,â the New Museum’s inaugural triennial featuring only artists who, as the title suggests, are younger than 33. It closes with these incomparable paragraphs:

Younger Than Jesus doesn’t have a comparable sense of unity, texture or lift. It is, despite its promise of freshness, business as usual. Its strengths are individual and episodic, with too much work, particularly photography, making too little impact. But my point is that beyond quibbles about choices of individual works, it raises the question of whether any mainstream museum show designed to be a running update exclusively on the work of young artists can rise above being a preapproved market survey. Removed from a larger generational context, can such a survey ever become a story, part of a larger history? (The same question applies to museum exhibitions that leave young artists out of the picture.) I’m asking. Its a complicated subject. I don’t know the answer.

In any case, a generational challenge has already been taken up elsewhere. A small commercial gallery called BLT, on the Bowery across from the New Museum, has announced that its May exhibition will consist exclusively of artists born before 1927. Louise Bourgeois, Lucian Freud and Ellsworth Kelly will be among the participants. The show will be called Wiser Than God.

• 1. April 20, 2009 6:11 pm Link

  Congratulations, Holland!

  Larry McCue

• 2. April 20, 2009 6:45 pm Link

  Dear Sir,
  I am a Washingtonian who prefers to read your assessments of art shows in DC instead of looking at what The Washington Post critics think.

  You understand non-Western art more fully than the critics at The Post. Your prose is as elegant as the shows you review.

  Thank you for your work, and congratulations. You are one of my favorite journalists.
  Blessings, Caroline Kenner

  — Caroline Kenner