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He always had insightful, surprising, arch things to say.
A polymath, he wore many hats.
Between 1973 and 1978, he irregularly published the downtown magazineArt-Ritewith compadres Edit deAk and Joshua Cohen.
In 1976, he co-founded the art bookstore Printed Matter, which still operates today.
Colab, as its known, was against minimalism.
(People used to define themselves by what they were against.)
These were the cool kids and hipsters, the desperate and burned out, the visionaries and druggies.
I met Walter when I began writing forArt in Americain the early 1990s.
We used to hang out in his small, cluttered office, laughing, talking, avoiding writing.
He had a million interests and contrary opinions, an outlaw pirate.
They were often thrown out.
Between 1996 and 2012, he was the online editor-in-chief of Artnet.
I said yes without checking with my bosses and never looked back.
This was a game changer for me.
It made me realize that writing did not exist if it did not exist online.
I remember begging Walter to not publish his diatribes about me.
He laughed and said, I cant stop him.
He made me realize that writers should just shine on like crazy diamonds.
Walter was a great writer.
How many critics have named a movement?
Walter was also an artist.
He once gave me a watercolor of a BLT.
Long before Damien Hirst cashed in making them, Walter made spin paintings.
My wife has one that hangs in our home.
His style was loose, colorful, and brushy.
Curator Barry Blinderman calls him one of the most underrated, unknown, undervalued artists.
After he lost his job at Artnet, he returned to being a full-time artist.
With his wife, Lisa Rosen, he became his version of happy.
He asked people to visit him in his studio.
Yet what Walter thought and felt about art was somehow always with us anyway.
