A New York Day with Jerry Saltz and Marc Jacobs

Vogue

Director: Catherine Orchard Director of Photography: Michael Lopez Editor: Evan Allan Senior Producer: Bety Dereje Producer, On Set: Rahel Gebreyes Associate Producer: Lea Donenberg Camera Operator: Andrew Maso Assistant Camera: Swelee Joseph Gaffer: Chris Boyle Audio: Bill Vella Production Assistant: Quinton Johnson Groomer: Jennifer Brent Production Coordinator: Ava Kashar Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors Line Producer: Romeeka Powell Senior Director, Production Management: Jessica Schier Assistant Editor: Andy Morell Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter Arts &amp; Graphics Lead: Léa Kichler Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch Associate Director, Post Production: Nicholas Ascanio Director, Content Production: Rahel Gebreyes Senior Director, Video: Romy van den Broeke Senior Director, Programming: Linda Gittleson VP, Video Programming: Thespena Guatieri Special Thanks: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Transcript

00:00For me, New York has become this fabulous aquarium where I have this soundtrack that

00:13I'm listening to and then seeing all sorts of things.

00:17I fall in love with every person I see.

00:24When I think of New York City, I think of the New York of my teenage years and the grittiness.

00:30I look at it through these lenses of, it was so cool, it was this, that.

00:36But I also think if you were 17 now and you come to New York City and you see it this

00:40way, isn't New York the same magical place for you at 17 as it was for me at 17?

00:46I guess the conversation is, was it really that great back then or was it just that I

00:54was 17?

00:55Yeah.

00:56And I think the answer is that it was probably a little bit of both.

00:59That's brilliant because that means there were old people thinking about us that they

01:05don't even know New York.

01:08So let's say you're at a dinner party, you're sitting next to my aunt and uncle and they

01:13have no idea, they don't know anything about art.

01:17How would you describe what you do?

01:20Wow.

01:21I hate sitting next to anybody that doesn't know what I do because I have nothing to talk

01:26about otherwise.

01:27But I would say I'm an art critic.

01:30I see about 25 or 30 shows a week in New York and then I go home and I worry about writing

01:42and I hate writing and then I write and my job is to notice things and say what I notice

01:52and not be afraid, even though I am afraid.

01:56What are you afraid of?

01:57I'm afraid of, what am I afraid of?

02:02I'm a bundle of nerves.

02:04Are you?

02:05Yeah, I am.

02:06And what are we afraid of?

02:08Everything.

02:09That's a whole other conversation.

02:10It's never specific, is it?

02:12I'm not afraid of dying.

02:14No, that's true.

02:16That's on my list of not afraid of.

02:18I guess I'm afraid, I mean I love putting myself out there and I love making things

02:24and showing things and I love when people hate it and I love when people love it.

02:30I have that too.

02:32But I'm still afraid of that reaction, that response of not being able to control the

02:36results.

02:37Yeah.

02:38I guess I fear like what will I be, who will I be if nobody cares?

02:45So hate and love are okay because that means you've caused some kind of reaction, right?

02:49I think for me that the process I find both thrilling and terrifying.

02:56Like every time-

02:57The writing process?

02:58Yeah, I hate writing.

03:00I'd rather do anything in this life than write and yet I can only write.

03:06What is the process like for you of designing?

03:11Process is, I think I actually read this on your page on Instagram.

03:16Of course you don't know what you're doing, you haven't done it yet.

03:20Right.

03:21Did you say that?

03:22I did.

03:23Yeah.

03:24I think since I read it, I bring it up all the time because part of my process is worrying

03:30or being afraid that I haven't figured out what our end result is.

03:38And I just think if only I knew what this was going to end up, we could work backwards

03:44and have a much easier time of putting it together.

03:47That's an impossibility.

03:48That's an impossibility because we can't get to that point of the process without going

03:51through the process.

03:53So what the process looks like for me is like thinking about what I'm interested in, thinking

03:58about what my team is interested in, looking at fabrics, talking about colors, thinking

04:03about shapes, proportions, silhouettes, thinking about a mood, and then starting to construct

04:09a story that we want to tell.

04:11Both of us work in these fields that everybody else either poo-poos or are intimidated by,

04:16or they talk about the money.

04:18And yet I think that both of us are sort of trying to do the best we can and make it accessible

04:25to as many people as possible.

04:29Does that work for you or how do you relate to that?

04:34I think there's like two sides to that.

04:36I always think like with the runway, what we say is it has like no boundaries.

04:42We just do what we want to do.

04:44But the price is very high.

04:45And by its nature, it's rare.

04:47It's inaccessible.

04:48Right.

04:49But I think what's important for me is that the ideas are accessible to anybody.

04:54I mean, even if what they do is inspire you, that's free, right?

05:01So it's kind of like art if you can, I mean, in a way, I'm not comparing fashion to art.

05:06I think fashion is art, and art is fashion, and it's all part of the whole ball of wax

05:15that everybody is always dividing things up.

05:18And I think that that's anti-everything.

05:21That's me.

05:22I think that you can say that because of where you are and what you do.

05:27But when a fashion designer says fashion is art, they are a pretentious, arrogant, you

05:33know, like how dare you think you are, you know, a great artist.

05:38You work in cloth and you make fashion.

05:42But that's probably not your type of critic who would feel that way.

05:46And I think that that's a shortcoming on the part of my world that it tries to keep every

05:52other world at arm's length, ceramics, fashion, macrame, everything.

05:59Yeah.

06:00But I was taught that, I mean, I was always intimidated by the art world growing up.

06:05I felt I didn't have enough of an education to look at art, you know.

06:09I didn't see me ending up on a park bench talking to you.

06:12I mean, I thought like, I thought I was going to have a career in fashion.

06:16I never thought I would be in the place I am, you know.

06:21I think that we all have an idea that we're going to work out, but we never envision what

06:27that means.

06:28Yeah.

06:29And it's so much better than anything we could imagine.

06:32It's true.

06:33Yeah.

06:34It's true.

06:35It really is true.

06:40The Met is the greatest encyclopedic museum of art in this hemisphere.

06:47It is a million square foot building with a million objects from all over the world

06:56that allows us to see everything, anywhere, anyhow.

07:02And when we get quiet in this massive structure, we talk to ourselves and we change the world

07:12and our life changes.

07:14So here we are in the Met's miraculous, glorious, mind-bending Sienna, The Rise of Painting,

07:221300 to 1350.

07:24And in a way, this is the beginning of time, or a beginning of time.

07:30Instead of a flat icon, you have a beginning of a story, of narrative, of turning, gesturing.

07:40It was hugely expensive and controversial when the Met bought it.

07:45And it looks like nothing.

07:47It looks like every other little icon.

07:50What do you see when you look at that?

07:53A lot more than I did before you explained it to me.

07:57The voices in our head have to be quieted so time can stop.

08:03Yes.

08:04And we can start to know ourselves, the I that lives inside of all of us, and what that

08:12I might think and how that I might connect to every other I.

08:19So much of art for me is the context, the time you see it, what you're seeing it with,

08:26you know, like the whole story.

08:28So I guess it's like, I mean, I'm immediately drawn to these because I just love that they're

08:36unfinished.

08:37Yes.

08:38And there's a suggestion of the story here.

08:40But of course, that just becomes even more exaggerated by the finish and the hyper, you

08:45know, sort of finish of the other pieces.

08:48So I looked at these and I just thought like, oh, what a relief to see this sort of veil.

08:54It's true.

08:55You know?

08:56That's brilliant.

08:57Unfinished is a very modern idea, too.

09:00And it's fantastic that way.

09:04It's like, this is what you come for.

09:09Everyone always asks, what does this mean?

09:11I don't know what it means.

09:13And I guess I would say that art means exactly what fashion means.

09:18You don't know what it means.

09:19And there are as many art centers as there are artists.

09:25The firepower of this wall is off the map.

09:29You have eight panels from one altarpiece that was cut up and dibbied up.

09:36And this work has never been brought together before.

09:40It will never come back together again.

09:43Look at the architecture of that space.

09:46This is the beginning of perspective, the idea that you're seeing into space.

09:52It's not just this flat thing.

09:56That isn't perfect, but it's forming.

09:59How did you come to look at art?

10:02What does that mean to you?

10:03How do you do that?

10:05How do you see all of this in these works?

10:07You know what?

10:08I think that anyone can do it, but you have to get very, very quiet inside.

10:14I go into this with the idea that there is no right answer.

10:19And so when I look at this, I'm telling myself a story that's completely my own.

10:25It's like Oscar Wilde said, every reader is reading themselves.

10:31I hear you, and then I think, all of that is true.

10:35However, when I do quiet myself, I don't read as illustrious and deep narrative that you do.

10:45So it's fascinating to hear your reading of it.

10:48All of us speak a different dialect of beauty.

10:52My dialect is from silent, inanimate objects.

10:58What do we want young artists to understand, to take away, to know right now?

11:04I think you said it really beautifully, and it stayed with me.

11:07You said, of course you don't know what you're doing.

11:10You haven't done it yet.

11:12And I think that sits with me so well, because I think one of the most beautiful things that

11:17I think keeps me and other young creative people going is curiosity.

11:23And curiosity doesn't need to have an answer.

11:27It just is curiosity.

11:28Yeah.

11:29It just is.

11:30Yeah, it just is.

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