My favorite art critic died earlier this month. Not only was he my favorite, he had a profound influence on how I think about art and its place within American history, and how American culture shapes—even creates and reveals—American identity itself. I picked that up from a single review he wrote in 1999 that I first saw in 2012, and it’s stayed with me since.
His name was Peter Schjeldahl and he had a mastery of language like no other critic I’ve ever read. “Few critics could match him for his intimate knowledge of New York’s art world,” remembered the New York Times, and “even fewer could rival him for sheer eloquence.” He was precise as a poet, which he was before he turned to writing art criticism.
Schjeldahl was born in Fargo, North Dakota in 1942. After high school he attended Carlton College in Minnesota for a couple of years but then dropped out and moved east. He wound up around New York City where he worked as a reporter and attended poetry writing workshops at the New School in Manhattan. After a year spent in Paris, he returned to New York in the mid-60s and began writing reviews for the Village Voice. Soon his work was appearing in Art News magazine and in the New York Times. In 1998, he became the regular art critic for the New Yorker where he remained until his death.
Like all good critics, he wasn’t hesitant to criticize. He described a 1999 show at the Whitney Museum as “forced and lame” and said it all but devalued the great works of art in it. But he was never cruel, never mean for the sake of being mean. Art, for him, provoked an immediate sensation no matter how familiar he was with the piece he was looking at. “I think I don’t get beyond my first impressions of artworks,” he said. “Most artists understand that their work’s effect should be permanently instantaneous.”
One of the words you often see used to describe his writing is lapidary. Indeed, I’ve seen the word lapidary most in my life in regard to his writing. The word means “characterized by an exactitude and an extreme refinement.” I don’t know any writer who wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that adjective. Schjeldahl makes it clear that people who want to communicate should study poetry. It’s painfully evident that many people in the country care not one bit for an ability communicate effectively, but for him, art was so important it demanded nothing less that the best communication about it.
He closed one of his early columns by simply saying “now go and look at some art and meet me back here next week.” Try as I may I could never say it better myself. Peter Schjeldahl was 80 years old.