The myth and the legend of Lower Manhattan arrived on stage, donning a black Qantas hat, pointing his iPhone at the crowd. “My name is Jerry Saltz. I’m a writer. I’m an art critic. I was a long-distance truck driver until I was 40 years old. I never went to school. I have no degree. Don’t listen to me.”

The crowd applauded.

The conversation began by zooming in on some of the art Saltz had seen during his short time in Australia, beginning with Sidney Nolan’s First-class Marksman of Ned Kelly, done in 1946. He compared Nolan’s work to Picasso’s, to Tony Albert’s, placing him as equally important but under-recognised. It is worth noting that First-class Marksman is the most expensive Australian painting ever sold, the Art Gallery of NSW paying $5.4 million for it in 2010. Which, in comparison to say, Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, which recently sold at Christie’s $181.2 million, rather proves Saltz’s point. He would later say this is central to the importance of his job: to highlight these discrepancies and give an equal platform to artists who might otherwise go unnoticed.

Saltz, who has proclaimed “I buy thrift art. No dogs, no clowns,” is a defiant critic amongst a media circus where criticism looks more and more like an Instagram slide, a press release, or something AI-generated that curves around any actual point. It’s a time when writing can act as just a headline, with some pretty imagery attached. Get those two perfected on an algorithm, and much of it can garner the same attention, if not more. Much of it is about finding out what an audience likes and doubling down on that. And that, comes at the expense of having an opinion, of the opportunity to sway an audience to view something differently.

With all his New Yorker forwardness, Saltz speaks to the antithesis of this media trend. No take is too bold, too left of centre, too brave, too unfashionable. He called Jeff Koons’s work “a huge nothing,” dismissing him as the embodiment of art world cynicism and market spectacle. Of Thomas Kinkade, the best-selling artist in America, he wrote: “Kinkade’s work is not art. It’s product.” He has been openly critical of the art world’s relationship with money, declaring that “the art market is a scam” and that “collecting art for investment is a desecration.” He has never tried to sell his truth for a seat at a more palatable table, and that is what makes him great.

Because a good critic doesn’t just tell you whether something is worth your time. They tell you why it matters right now, in this moment, in this culture. They are the ones who can place a painting next to a political climate, a film next to a generation’s anxiety, a restaurant next to the city. They give the work a context it couldn’t build for itself. Without that, we are left with vibes and AI-curated feeds, and neither of those has ever changed anybody’s mind, outside of maybe some wallpaper and a set of fake tabis.

So when McGillivray brought up the dreaded word AI, his position, although danced around, was noble enough for my very attractive future boyfriends and me to bank on. “You have to make yourself yourself, so you’re not replaced,” he said. “You cannot hide your own feelings. You must write in your own voice.”