Let's See: Writings on Art from The New Yorker: Writings on Art from The New Yorker

by Peter Schjeldahl

Distinguished critic at The New Yorker since 1998, Peter Schjeldahl has been described as America's most influential writer on art. Blessed with an unerring eye, he tackles a myriad of subjects with wit, poetry, and perspicacity, examining and questioning the art before him while reveling in the power and beauty of language. His writing springs from a desire to be understood by all readers, and a determination to help them engage with art of every kind.



Covering subjects drawn from a broad canvas of the history of art—from ancient Greece, Mexico, and Byzantium, through Raphael, Rubens, and Rembrandt, to Bruce Nauman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and John Currin—the writings collected here seek out with precision and economy the essence of the individual artist or work under discussion, but they never lose sight of the bigger picture: What is beauty? What does it mean to be an American artist? What can the art we produce and admire tell us about ourselves?



With an imaginative introduction—twenty questions, each one posed to Schjeldahl by a different artist or writer—this collection will appeal to anyone who considers the experience of art, and of writing on art, an invitation to a voyage.



Coverage includes:

     • large-scale exhibitions at leading institutions around the world

     • shows at private galleries

     • profiles of prominent members of the art world

     • personal accounts of time spent with artists

     • the influences of museum spaces on our experience of art

Genres: Art, Essays, Nonfiction, Art History, Criticism

256 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2008

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me over a month to finish this book, slowly working my way, an essay or two at a time. For me, it was an interesting look at the Emperor's New Clothes school of art, art that exists only because we are told that it is art, and if we disagree we are not holding an opinion, but are simply uninformed enough to possess one. Bah! I spit on that! I am a spitter!

I was attracted to the book simply because of the John Currin cover. Currin is one of my favorite artists of the new generation, along with Lisa Yuskavage and Dave Cooper. Unfortunately, in the book I was bombarded by artists who hand out snowballs on the streets of New York, or put a candy bowl in a gallery, all as a way of expressing inter-societal relationships in the modern age. HA! Have I mentioned that I am a spitter? I spit again!

What's saddest of all is that Schjeldahl seems to be too educated to fall for this artistic tomfoolery. Yet the man can apparently look me in the face and tell me that Agnes Martin was a brilliant artist. Anyone who truly believes Agnes Martin was either brilliant OR an artist is suspect, and yet Schjeldahl believes both to be true. Sigh. Do we not notice the emperor's tallywacker flying free?

Here's an easy tip...if the artist HAS an artist's statement at all, then they probably suck. The only proper artist statement is, "I dunno. I do it because I have to."

My thoughts are that the problem with modern art is education itself. We're all afraid of looking dumb, and when members of academia tell us that such and such artist is brilliant, and that we're fools if we don't genuflect our agreement, then the vast majority of people tow the line. It takes the "uninformed hick" off the street to tell the honest truth...namely that, yes, your three year old child COULD do that.

So...one star for having a smattering of actual artists in the book, and one star out of sympathy for having to, in a regular New Yorker column, pick out talented artists from the current poser-heavy crop. With such a demanding and thankless task, I suppose I'd pick out a few zeros as well.

But never Agnes Martin. Never.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first started reading, the Q&A that opens "Let's See" originally seemed like a strange choice. There's no introduction to Schjeldahl's work, just a list of questions posed by Schjeldahl's very famous friends (Steve Martin!) and very-famous-to-other-critics friends (Luc Sante, Deborah Solomon, etc.) asking very specific questions about everything from his previous career as a poet to his own biases as an art critic. In this opening, he also admits that he's never read anything by Malcolm Gladwell - which made me feel especially bad for Gladwell, because they're coworkers and all. But the second I started reading that first essay, I realized the guy probably doesn't need a regular introduction because everyone who's bought this book already loves him in a kind of superfan way, and as soon as I read the first essay, I felt the exact same way. Schjeldahl offers so many great quotes (when asked if he ever feels sad, Alexander Calder once replied that every time he thinks he's about to feel sad, he falls asleep) and heartbreaking anecdotes (Arshile Gorky writing "Goodbye my loveds" on the crate crate he used to hang himself, and Schjeldahl imagining what it might be like to be one of Gorky's "loveds"). And there's such a total delight in everything Schjeldahl looks at. In one section, he talks about how it's important to understand the appeal of the things you hate so that your ability to love doesn't become atrophied, and he does this again and again in these essays, going back to works he thought he loathed and reevaluating them until he finds something to love about each one. He's so open to ambiguity and so compelling in his reconsideration of previously-hated works that he even made me think twice about John Currin, whose stuff I never liked. I was so inspired by this collection that I spent a lot of time reading more about the artists he writes about. I've officially added him to my list of favorite critics.

[Kurt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reviews of shows from New York and vicinity over the last 10 years. No illustrations, so unless you attended most of these shows or are an art history PhD you will have no idea what is being discussed. No essay is substantial enough that it would be worth going to another book to make up for the absence of illustrations. That said, the few essays that I was able to follow -- e.g., a review of the Gauguin/Tahiti show at Boston's MFA a couple years ago -- were rewarding.

[Dave H · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Then I happened to look closely at it"

It is a rare person who can tell you why something is good with enthusiasm and style. When they start talking, listen. A recurring theme in this is new appreciation or a deeper appreciation won by taking a different look a work of art.

I want to knock this down to four stars because there aren't any pictures in the book, but that's not fair. And were this a large book, with prints, it would be a treasure. Because there are no pictures, you will need a screen, the biggest you can find to follow the referenced works.

But it is a treasure -- an introduction to many artists, a guide to hundreds of years and the many movements in art, particularly the twentieth century and, importantly, a guide for the eye, what to see, what to let your mind see.

As a bonus, I was reading through Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to In Search of Lost Time while reading this, and it was nice to see two people, a hundred years apart, fall over themselves in talking up the same art.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The bagel-chewiness of these essays kept me at them for a while, one or two a day was plenty - but unsurprisingly it increased the already throbbing cerebral horn I have for Schjeldahl's prose.

He isn't afraid of the purple, if something has really inspired him he's off in a tizz of jangling sensational claims. The writing isn't cool, it's opinionated and at times, piss-funny.

An ideal combination of high and low registers, his essays sometimes felt like a satire on all that worthy, snoring art-writing that academia specialises in producing. It's zestiness points towards a Mennipean spirit.

It also pointed me towards the work of modern American artists, painters in particular, whose work I barely knew. Country libraries don't oblige me with monographs on them, but I have a good shopping list for the f800s next time I'm at a Uni library, or fall into a vat of money and can buy books.

He can be an utter bitch too, while nicely justifying why he's sharpening his critical knives.

I want to quote extensively my favorite bits in this review, but instead, just get out and read it. Go on.

[Jose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Schjeldahl's "Let's See. Writings on Art from the New Yorker" is a collection of short articles about a variety of exhibitions by this renowned critic. He has his favorites (Picasso, the German abstract expressionists..) and manages to find the gold even in those pieces that leave him less excited (Christo, Rubens, Lucian Freud). I disagree with a great deal of what he writes or the qualities he discovers in certain artists (P. Guston, Brice Marden, Lisa Yuskavage, Agnes Martin...) but there is no question that his takes on art are well thought out and that reading him is a pleasure of language and condensed wisdom. As a critic he rarely enthuses but also rarely fails to amuse and even, even! trigger the desire to jump out of the and visit a few museums.
I think it's best to get a taste from some quotes I extracted for their humor and sharpness.

" 'This exhibition tells one of the most compelling and rewarding stories in the entire history of art' the catalogue introduction by art historian John Golding begins. I'll buy that- but to extract the story- an elliptical tale, full of hints, puzzles, and fine discriminations- while looking at so much stupendous art is like trying to check the oil in a speeding truck" from "Twin Peaks: Matisse/Picasso.

"A Calder doesn't set off the questions that abort so much public art in our democracy. What is that? What is it doing there? When will it go away?" from "Calder in Bloom"

"In nearly every Rockwell, someone is discovered to be at odds with something. Take "Saying Grace" for example. a November, 1951, Post cover that pictures a countrified old woman and a little boy praying in the train-station restaurant under the eyes of a working-class hard cases. The watchers, not the watched, star in the mild drama. Their domain has been invaded. They are variously bemused, but it does not occur to them to react overly. Their restraint ennobles them. The traveler's piety is safe in a profane joint, secured by the democratic imperative to make space for difference. " from "Norman Rockwell"

"We may never get pass Minimalism, in the sense of developing a new big idea of what art can and should do in the world. Minimalism nailed the spiritual vacuum at the core of secular society, and the deep-down forswearing of judgment- open mindedness like a hole in the head- that preserves democracy. The movement's peak revelation of meaning is Maya Lin's Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, the lucky hit of one art student that was plainly influenced by Serra. It is about death, which erases all differences. It stirs grief, which is bottomless. It is like an Earth Mother gathering in her broken children. The memorial is also, by its existence, an advertisement of government institutions as bravely, profoundly responsible. There's the rub of Minimalism, which always endorses some or another faceless power. Minimalism ends where it begins, at the edge of a cliff. Any reaction against it can only be a turning-back." from "Minimalisms"

"Like many people, I have trouble with Ruben's nudes, especially the female ones: all that smoldering flesh, vibrantly alive but with the erotic appeal of a mud slide." from "Rubenessence".

"Condescension begs the question of why we should be interested now- as I think we are- in Victoriana, which for most of the twentieth century was an emblem of stuffiness. I suspects that it's because our own supposedly liberated age is itself marked by militant conventionality and bossy moralism. Take a lately enshrined oxymoron, "sexual identity". The phrase conveys a giddy confidence that the magma of sex can be managed with bien-pensant cookie cutters." from "Nothing on: Sex and the Victorians"

"Hassam's close acquaintance Frederic Remington, the East Coastal Western painter took things somewhat farther in a letter to a friend: "I've got some Winchesters, and when massacring begins which you speak of, I can get my share of'em and what's more I will. Jews-injuns-Chinamen-Italians-Huns, the rubbish of the earth I hate." The immigrant menace was bound to scare self-made men who sensed vulnerability in their clubby prestige. Having thoroughly compromised himself in the interest of respectability, Hassam faced long odds in an even contest with clever ruffians, just off the boat, who had nothing to lose. Fear might have inspired the late bonuses of his art" from "impressions of Childe Hassam"

"Meanwhile, many a body constructed by Ingres would fall apart if it undertook to walk across a room.The right shoulder in perhaps his single most glorious portrait, the New York Frick's Collection 'Vicomtesse d'Haussonville', apparently emerges from the poor girl's rib cage. But again, go argue. We're talking about once-in-a-lifetime ravishment here, not aptitude for tennis." -from "Ingres"

"The Williams show rebuts the comfortable sentiment that Hitler was a 'failed artist.'. In fact, once he found his métier, in Munich after the First World War, he was masterly, first as an orator and then as an all-around impresario of political theater. He was also deluded. He had no vision of the future apart from ever grander opera. He met his end- which, as a deep dyed Wagnerian, he might have anticipated but apparently did not- as a quivering wreck of the boy who had been so awed by imperial Vienna. A photograph in the Williams show catches a puffy Führer in his last days, as Berlin lay in ruins, gazing rapturously at a tabletop model of Linz, which he envisioned as the cultural center of Europe, remade as a modern Valhalla. It is an appalling image, which suggests that he Second World War was incidental to a downtown redevelopment project. Rothschild, in a wall text, draws his moral from the show:'The union of malevolence and beauty can occur; we must remain vigilant against malevolence, and we should resign ourselves to the truth that beauty is fundamentally amoral." from "Hitler as artist"

"Nothing ruins a critic like pretending to care".

"Artistic temperament sets in at an early age, though it may not be realized until later, if at all. (Only fools and dilettantes deem it a happy fate.)"

[Natalie Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

he's not my fave, but it's good

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvelous and strong art writing.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

First things first: Schjeldahl is a spectacular writer and essayist. At a party once, I asked an Art History PhD student her thoughts about Schjeldahl, and she mentioned that, while she often completely disagrees with his analyses, she reads him all of the time, as his writing just too spectacular. She even assigns his work to her students to show how good and intoxicating art writing can be.

I came to Schjeldahl via the NYer, thus, this is a great occasion to revisit some of the essays that first piqued my interest in his writing and criticism. The John Currin essay is particularly fun, especially as Schjeldahl uses it as an occasion to unabashedly highlight his wish for the return of painting to the favor of the art world—a desire I very much share.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's pretty simple: Schjeldahl is just absolutely brilliant -- almost uncomfortably so. He is breathtakingly insightful not just about art and artists, but about taste, human nature, society, history, New York.... (Seriously, I would guarantee you'd be dazzled by a Schjeldahl essay on anything remotely visual -- dirt, say, or thumbtacks, or lighting your farts on fire.) Add that to his lushly discursive, if slightly florid, style ("folderol" and "eclat" are now permanent additions to my vocabulary), and you have a match made in heaven. Reading this collection was brain-achingly exhausting and one of the most immensely rewarding experiences I've had in a long time.

[Duc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Calvin Tompkin's Artist Lives before I read this book. Peter's writing is so dense and full of insights. I think Peter's writing is more lively then Calvin's. Each article is short, about three pages. He manage to pack in more criticism then Calvin's in six pages or more. Peter's also a former poet. He seems to have a very different perspective in art. Both of these were on the shelf together at my library and both works have been compiled from the writings in the New York magazine. Peter's book was published with a less well know publisher.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Schjeldahl's columns, but reading them back to back in a book format is a bit tedious. Very knowledgable, full of interesting facts of artists lives, but repetitive. Very painting and museum -centric, it's basically 75 reviews of major museum shows of famous painters, from the Renaissance to present. I believe there is only one review of a sculptor. I longed for more variety. I would recommend reading this in short spurts.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would not miss an article by Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker, and this erudite book collects the best of this
art critic's works. They are always relatively short, always
well written and always give me new ways of looking at and
thinking about art. He is simply the best particularly in his comments re modern and contemporary art.

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a HUGE Schjedahl fan it pains me to say that I am less interested in this collection of essays than some of his others. Being that they were published for the New Yorker they are more descriptive than evaluative...more facts means less Schjeldahl.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

good stuff, but not too easy to take in large chunks, especially about artists i don't particularly like- which is what i like about his articles in the new yorker, reading about whatever. but still, pretty solid, even if it is strange to read his ending bon mots every 3 pages.

[Elizabeth Lefebvre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love his insights, his apparent humility, his humour, the quality of his writing. Articles on an amazing range of topics; Picasso, the Victorians, Joan Mitchell... I keep this gem in my bathroom, which is as readers know the height of praise for any book.

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review of this books is at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/schwabsky

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love Pete's writing. Way the book is set up makes for slow going. It would also be helpful if there were pictures of the artists/art he was talking about. Read with Google Images nearby.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, inspiring, and connected to the experience of being alive.