“Well, that was a scary 24 hours and a journey into FB hell,” wrote New York critic Jerry Saltz on a Facebook post this morning. “Facebook deleted the picture I posted from the Whitney Biennial for Forest Bess’s self-surgery on his genitals. I couldn’t see my own page, couldn’t get access. Pfft. Just like that.”
Then Mr. Saltz, whose Facebook life we’ve documented in the past, was apparently asked to answer some Facebook security questions by “naming the people in these photographs.” He was unable to do that because he said, “Well, SO MANY PEOPLE POST PICTURES on my page (and I never delete them) that the pictures the system generated were totally foreign to me.”
Mr. Saltz failed a second time and would have been kicked off Facebook permanently (check out Gawker’s review of Facebook’s policies with respect to objectionable images here) to the great chagrin of his legions of followers and friends in the art world (5,000 friends, as of this post, to be exact—the facebook limit—with his pending-friend-request limit maxed out!) had it not been a picture of three artists formerly on Work of Art, the Bravo show on which Mr. Saltz serves as a judge: Peregrine Honig, Young Sun Han and Michelle Matson.
“Peregrine, Young, and Michelle, I ♥ you,” Mr. Saltz said in conclusion. “Thank you. I am sorry I did not give you $100,000. But I.O.U. Saved by of all things that strange strange reality tv gameshow about art….So, hi. I’m back.”
Hi, back at you, Mr. Saltz. We’re glad you’re back. And for everyone else, here’s what Facebook “saved” you from seeing.
