Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018

by Peter Schjeldahl, Jarrett Earnest (Introduction)

Hot Cold Heavy Light collects 100 writings—some long, some short—that taken together forma group portrait of many of the world’s most significant and interesting artists. From Pablo Picasso to Cindy Sherman, Old Masters to contemporary masters, paintings to comix, and saints to charlatans, Schjeldahl ranges widely through the diverse and confusing art world, an expert guide to a dazzling scene. No other writer enhances the reader’s experience of art in precise, jargon-free prose as Schjeldahl does. His reviews are more essay than criticism, and he offers engaging and informative accounts of artists and their work. For more than three decades, he has written about art with Emersonian openness and clarity. A fresh perspective, an unexpected connection, a lucid gloss on a big idea awaits the reader on every page of this big, absorbing, buzzing book.

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

404 pages, Hardcover

First published June 4, 2019

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've already read most of Schjeldahl's reviews in the New Yorker or the Voice, and am glad to have them all collected here for me to reread whenever the mood strikes me. He is the foremost art critic of his generation - knowledgeable and insightful about art, a wonderful wordsmith, without a hint of pedantry. No matter what I've thought I knew about an artist's work, Schjeldahl always manages to further illuminate my understanding.

[Ginni · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's strange reviewing a book of art reviews. I'm several degrees removed from the act of creation and looking at it with a lofty, consumerist eye. Do art critics feel like this all the time? (Yes, this collection does include an essay about art criticism itself.)

Peter Schjeldahl truly enjoys art, and I did enjoy Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light even though it took me ages to finish it. Organized into four completely arbitrary categories and ordered in a way that makes sense to only the author, the book compiles 100 of Schjeldahl's art writings from 1988 through 2018. I barely paid attention to the dates on each piece; every one felt equally relevant and fresh.

None of these essays are very long, but they still took me quite some time to get through—not in a bad way. You have to look up the art that's being described to be able to fully appreciate the commentary. Even if you're an art connoisseur (I am not), Schjehldahl covers such a diverse range of mediums and artists that no one could possibly be familiar with everything he discusses. Full-color inserts would have been too much, and black and white would not have done justice to the works. This is how it had to be, but it still feels incomplete. Also, I like to think that I have a respectable vocabulary, but I had to stop every few pages to look up words. Again, that's not a strike against Schjehldahl.

Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light swings much closer to “heavy” than “light,” but in a down-to-earth, human way. Much of the artwork I discovered through this collection is incredible. The real star, however, is not art but rather Schjeldahl's passion for art. I appreciate it even when I don't get it.

(I received this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway.)

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is best enjoyed like a cake—savored slice by slice, not all at once but relished—a tasty treat for your senses. And buckle up as Schjeldahl will employ them all! I came in unfamiliar with his work, I just liked the title and love to pick up anything related to art. Schjeldahl’s writing! It blew me over! What a fantastic, delightful wordsmith—the craftsmanship of his sentences alone had me hooked, and I was continually tickled by a particular phrasing that described something so familiar yet so surprisingly new that I marveled at his gift of not just seeing but experiencing art—thoroughly and openly—without pretension or snobbery. And then patiently (and playfully) he walks you through the the process. I personally think the only way to read this book is slowly with a lot of googling down rabbit holes; my preferred emersion into art history is through the frame of a good art critic—and Schjeldahl is now my favorite.

A tasty excerpt:

“The Matisse show at the Museum of Modern Art is a controlled orgy. It will let you know how much pleasure you can stand. I mean visual pleasure, of course—arousal of eyesight—but more, as well. Matisse cross-wires sight with other senses, sparking phantom thrills of taste and smell. He stimulates the mind to analysis, then slaps it silly with audacities. He activates the occult handshake of aesthetics and sex. He does it all with practically monkish discipline, giving grown-up permission to our immersion in polymorphous joys. He makes a science of pleasing, as pleasurable in what he leaves out as in what he provides. He omits any messy appeal to the heart. He is monstrously cold.”

[John Clarkson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful. I became enamored with Art History in college. Took course after course. Always have enjoyed (mostly) my time in museums. Gradually, I became a bit skittish about art. For a while, I agreed with Joseph Beuys that everything is art (in its way). However, much of what has been rendered as art felt a bit like a con. A notion. A display. Something other than "art". Reading Schjeldahl refreshed everything for me. I still think that perhaps half of what makes it into contemporary museums isn't really art. But after Schjeldahl, it's all worth seeing.

[Amy in the Desert · Rating 5 out of 5]

He is so delightfully bitchy. Absolutely loved reading this books bit by bit like a delicious box of treats

[Mejix · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very likeable voice. He can write gorgeously. Many opinions are offered just to be a contrarian. His opinion on Lucian Freud seems to be reaction to market forces more than anything else. His opinion on Goya is baffling, as is his defense of Koons. What distinguishes him is the personality that comes across. A very interesting and intelligent companion. You don't have to agree with him on everything to enjoy his presence.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the shows I was too far away, too young, too busy, too clueless or too poor to see, made manifest in the articles he wrote for The Village Voice and The New Yorker.

[Jeffrey Bumiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really enjoyable collection of criticism/essays on many of my favorite artists (De Kooning, Anselm Kiefer, Agnes Martin, Mondrian, Bruce Nauman, Goya, Degas, Jean Dubuffet, and on and on) and some on artists that I'm just encountering for the first time. A great read!

[Charlie Lincoln · Rating 5 out of 5]

Casually virtuosic

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love him.

[atom_box Evan G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miss Eggen: I survived; I understand now!

What?

Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light gives 100 ways to not follow an approved essay structure

Every single essay has a brilliant, organic structure.

None of these are:
a deductive essay.
an inductive essay.
an expository writing.
a chronological reveal.
a now-flashback-now.
a hook, backstory, conclusion.

But Schjeldahl is aware of all that.
This stuff appears effortless to write. It is certainly not.
It's as carefully written as the dialogue of Reservoir Dogs.
And so it seems effortless.

Write on a deadline.
Write without inhibition.
Write repeatedly.
Have clarity of where you're going,
but arrive there by a route not found on any Google Map.

Getting back to Miss Eggen (reveal: Vibeke Eggen was our 9th grade English teacher), writing like this presupposes mastery of the elementery forms. Those can become brushstrokes, reflexive moves, not the whole enchilada.

I feel surrounded in 2025 by "how to give a Ted Talk" or "Ask ChatGPT to write a coherent essay about XYZ". This is a newer version of 1979, where Vibeke would insist that we write inverted or expository or "Roman Numerals and then Big A, Little a, b, c...".

Peter Schjeldahl brings back the poetry of an essay.
Peter passes the Turing test in a way that ChatGPT still cannot.

I read 9 of the 100 essays. I think that's a good amount!

And to Vibeke: I get it. But you beat out of me so much joy and creation impulse. It briefly reappeared when I had an electric typewriter in 1988. But now I'm ready for it to really appear.

Going over right now to buy an old copy of this book on Better World Books. (Update: the cheapest copy was 22USD: too much.)







Meg's summary of the writing style of Schjeldahl:
- very energetic
- transitions are the artful part: edited with a rhythm of short transitions
- fast
- conversational
- you start and idea and then off to another
- plenty of information
- it's his reactions and digressing into efficient lightning backstories of things it recalls for him

[Tiffany Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter, art, opinions, more art, I mean come on this one is a no brainer 5 stars.

[Henry Begler · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s usually more fun to read a scathing review than a fulsome one but these reviews make loving art seem like the most fun thing in the universe. Schjeldahl really emphasizes the physicality and bodily response of seeing, paintings are always beating him up, making him tremble with joy etc etc. He is incredibly precise with language. His enthusiasm is wonderful and so infectious. It makes you want to drop what you’re doing and SPRINT to the nearest museum. It’s bracing like a cold wind. These excerpts tell it better than I could.

Like the bus in the thriller Speed, this masterpieces-only retrospective never slows down and thus is hard to board. How I did it was to stroll nonstop through the show, finally pausing in the last room with the eerily deliberate paintings of de Kooning's dotage that lay out rudi. ments of his genius like silk ties on a bedspread. I studied those works that have no historical precedent that I can think of. Then I left the show and nonchalantly walked back in at the beginning, going straight to Pink Lady (I944) and giving it my full attention. The effect was like a plane taking off, when the acceleration presses you against the seat. The painting's violent intelligence detonated pleasure after pleasure. When I turned around, everything in the show was singing its lungs out. Half an hour later I was beaten to a pulp of joy. I'll rest and go back for more.

or:

Mondrian's pictures are now about only the experience that they offer. To have it, I suggest first going through the show studiously. Read the damned wall texts, because who can not read writing on walls? (It's primordial, maybe dating from "Beware the Sabre-Toothed Tiger.) Register the boilerplate "march toward abstraction." Remind yourself that you don't care. Mondrian could have marched to Pretoria for all it mattered. (It matters as a difficulty that he incurred and that made him sweat) Then, after a stroll in MoMAs garden, return to stalk joy.
Maybe start at the end, with Broadway Boogie Woogie. You have seen this jigsaw of colored lines and little squares many times. It is always up at MoMA. Now look hard. It is three pictures in one, each starring a color: red, yellow, blue. When you think red, the other hues defer. They do a jiggling routine in praise of the hero, red. When you think blue, blue steps out, and red joins the chorus. Then yellow, the same. (A fourth color, gray, shyly holds to a supporting role.) It really is like boogie-woogie piano, ping-ponging between left and right hands. You could also take it as an allegory of democracy. Don't, though.

The best book I’ve read on how to look at art since Ways of Seeing. Five stars!! (Except, oy vey, no pictures).

[Brenden Gallagher · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018 by Peter Schjeldahl" (edited by Jarrett Earnest) may be the best collection of criticism I have ever read.

Unlike a lot of my peers (television and film artists), I have read a lot of criticism. And more importantly, I like to read criticism. Theater Criticism was compulsory in my degree program and History of Literary Criticism was one of those unicorn courses that somehow satisfied three general education requirements at once. I used the knowledge gained in these courses to build a nice side hustle doing criticism (I hesitate to say "as a critic") while I worked for the better part of a decade to establish myself as a professional television writer. That being said, I am never going to be above churning out a 1,000-word essay if the money is right or if the spirit moves me.

I think that a lot of criticism today is pretty bad. Everyone thinks that things used to be better before they were born and are sure to get worse after they die, but I think I have a strong case in this particular case. The decline of print magazine subscriptions and the rise of digital sites trying to do too much with too little has led to a decline in arts coverage. Specifically, you see fewer and fewer posts for particular critics of particular art forms. So, a position like the one Schjeldahl held at the Village Voice and the New Yorker, that of "art critic," and meaning "critic of fine art specializing in painting" is rarer and rarer. At the moment, the only art form where a critic might hope to build a "career" is probably television.

Few writers are full-time critics today and fewer writers are focused entirely on one discipline. Those who are, generally on the mass art beats of film, television, internet culture (memes as art), and fashion are low paid and feel obligated to churn out fairly friendly coverage in exchange for the access that will differentiate them from dozens of other digital outlets. This is why every film seems to have an 86 on Rotten Tomatoes.

The result is often lazy, rushed, overly-friendly and undisciplined criticism. For me, the best example of this is the work coming out of New York Magazine's Vulture, which merged with comedy fan site Splitsider a while back and generally can't decide if it meant to do the kind of liberal political analysis published on their sister sites The Cut and NYMag, PR for the NBC/Universal family of comedy personalities, or actual criticism. And so they often fail at all three.

There is a lot to appreciate about Schjeldahl's writing, but for me above all, his fearlessness is his best quality. Though not an artist himself, Schjeldahl immersive himself in the art world for decades and as a result, he can write (it seems at 79 years old he is still active) beautifully and convincingly about any artist from the Old Masters down to the most densely ironic installation artists of today.

The sheer confidence of his writing goes a long way. From his perches at hallowed institutions, he clearly had nothing to fear from the powers that be, whether they be artists, gallerists, academics, or his peers. He mentions offhand that he "lost a friendship" over one of his reviews. I cannot imagine any in-house critic at Rotten Tomatoes even risking an imaginary friendship with Marvel, let a real one.

The combination of bravery, artistry, and sheer knowledge of his craft results in so many brilliant essays that they couldn't all fit in this sizable collection, and I am having trouble trimming down my favorites for this review.

Let's start with his pans. Though, the complexity of his reviews is such that I hesitate to say that he ever writes a wholly "bad" review. Schjeldahl completely reads Shephard Fairy for the tedious hype machine he is in a review published when he was in the process of his post-Obama "Hope" victory lap. He harshly upbraids both Picasso and De Kooning for their misogyny and the legacy of toxicity they left behind them. He takes aim at fellow critic Clement Greenberg in a lovely essay that serves as a personal reminder to the author not to get too big for his own britches.

More impressive are his positive reviews that often verge on the ecstatic and revelatory. One of the most important functions of a critic is to shine a light on underappreciated or undervalued artists. His reappraisal of the gritty tabloid journalist Weegee and the 1600s Dutch painter Judith Leyster are two of the greatest examples of this genre that I've ever seen. I had to stop and Google the work as soon as I finished these essays

Schjeldahl also writes brilliantly when it comes to those necessary and difficult moments when a critic must express how truly good a beloved artist really is. Schjeldahl writes lovely pieces about a number of well-admired masters, and his pieces on Vermeer, Jackson Pollock, and Rembrandt, in particular, will remind you that art appreciation is a hard-earned skill separate from that of the artist.

I would be remiss if I didn't also mention his reflections on craft. The man knows his stuff, and his deep-dives into the challenges of art restoration or the rise and fall of abstract expressionism are little masterclasses in themselves.

I'm not proposing that Schjeldahl is the last great critic. I think there are still critics out there who are doing find work. But, as artforms ebb and flow (Schjeldahl's favorite, painting, is certainly in decline), so to do critical moments. While a number of Gen Xers and Boomers still working have had nice careers as critics, the prospects for the younger generations are bleak. Even so, there are a number of critics I admire in my generation, but the ones who immediately come to mind -- Seth Simons, Sean T. Collins -- have had trouble holding onto an institutional perch or don't seem to want one. And so, I am sure there are more out there, but I may not know where to find them.

I hope those critics who are still out there and want to do good, brave work find the writing of Schjeldahl. In his final essay in the collection, a manifesto of sorts, "The Critic As Artist," he writes about the deep influence of Oscar Wilde on his work and unpacks to the craft of the critic. It is a lovely treatise that I won't do the disservice of trying to explain here. Go read the whole thing. But, here's hoping that a future generation of critics will find in Schjeldahl what he found in Wilde.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schjeldahl is somewhat of a personal hero for how accessible he makes art criticism, while harbouring an unbridled love and appreciation for its craft. his words make my chest hurt sometimes with how feeling they are. this book has also half supplemented an art history undergrad. RIP to a real one <3
9.5/10

[Myles · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s never a review he publishes that doesn’t somehow make me swoon. Even when he gives great artists a thrashing, there is such love in his work. Reading him makes shrinks the distance between the intentions of the past and our immediate physical sensations.

[amanda]

one of the only white men I adore. grateful for this compilation. though if you are new to peter's writing, I recommend "Let's See" as a more curated selection with some of what I consider are his best reviews.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Criticism that reads like poetry

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A thinker can avoid error or seek truth but cannot do both.” William James as quoted by Peter Schjeldahl

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a poet turns art critic, the writing is magnetic

[Jonathan May · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dazzling, and often hilarious, balls-to-the-wall ride of important art and what that even means.

[Cynthia Abraham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely ebullient!
Schjeldahl’s astute analyses are the apotheosis of criticism as a form of art.

[Gabe Steller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this over 6-8 months but only because these little essay/reviews are each so short and so satisfying that I didn't really wanna spoil the feeling the last one gave me by reading another one immediately!! My mind feels full, but i only read 3 pages! Go straight through or jump to someone you love or despise! Either way you'll have a good time!

And I'm serious cuz in 100 pieces i think i only didn't like 1 of them, so thats 99% great! Schjedahl, (who was also Minnesotan 👍👍👍) manages to be concise, unpretentious, insightful, and conversational all at once. he may very well be my favorite critic. And all the better that his subject was art, which is easy to enjoy but (at least for me) can be difficult to articulate your exact response to.

To this end some of some of my favorite pieces were on the stuff i skip at the museum. Where i can tell the artist is doing something well. but its just not my thing, either its boring me or somethings holding me back. Schejdahl has this feeling too or anticipates it in the reader, and he's so good at making the subject feel fresh, something he accomplishes most explicitly in his essay on greek sculpture that I'm gonna quote here (sorry!!) cuz i just think you gotta read it to get the effect.

“I think a lot of people are ambivalent about the Greek thing, which has been subject to more solemn hype than anything else except Jesus. A Victorian sentimentality hangs especially heavy. The British loved Greece so much they took it home with them. Ok, I had sensed through Literature the the greatness of a people who seemed, first and forever best, to have thought everything thinkable and imagined everything imaginable. But it all felt so already-known, and encrusted with learnedness. In my own pleasure-seeking self-education in art, I skipped Classicism…

…This Torso of a running nereid is the suddennest (Great word!-Gabe) hunk of stone you ever saw. Her speed plasters her thin garment to her with a wet t-shirt effect, but she's nobody’s babe. She is all fluid power. She can run for days and will arrive, where she's going, like a thunderclap. Then there is Nike reaching back and down to adjust a sandal. A goddess doing something gawky…

…I talked with an art-knowledgable person who deprecated the Met show. Her favorite thing in it she said was pre classical standing figure in a rigid egyptian influenced style.This struck me as a very modern opinion and it made me realize my own long antagonism towards the Greeks belongs to an educated contempt for both realism and idealism—opposites that are seamlessly joined in Greek art and none other since. I hereby renounce that idiocy. Athena rules!”

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can still remember the the first time I recognised the name 'Peter Schjeldahl'.

I was reading a review of a Tintoretto exhibition. The reviewer, whose identity was still unregistered in my mind, described his experience of the exhibition as "intoxicating", "getting drunk" on his art, and "vicariously feeling, in your body, the action of the figures". I only then glanced at the name of the author: Peter Schjeldahl. So much of his experience of the exhibition was driven by a visceral, feel-it-in-your-guts type affair. There was no stuffy academic prose that befalls most art criticism.

I was hooked. Turns out I've been reading his work for years, not paying attention to the author.

Also turns out he has been dishing out brilliant, sharp, somatic art reviews for decades. His '94 review of de Kooning's exhibition left him "beaten to a pulp of joy". "The effect was like a plane taking off, when the acceleration presses you against the seat. The painting's violent intelligence detonated pleasure after pleasure."

There is no irony in his work. No trendy buzzwords that plague the art world. Just authenticity. You can truly tell the impact that good art has on him.

Over time, he has become strangely like a friend. His beautiful recent essay, 'The Art of Dying' where he reveals that he is dying terminal lung cancer, oddly hit me, with a whole lot more force than I was expecting.

This is a book I know I will continually return to and re-read over the years. Any time I need a surge of inspiration about the possibility of art, I will go back to Schjeldahl.

[Erika Verhagen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well of course Schjeldahl is my favourite critic: it is impossible to predict whether the next sentence he is about to pen is furiously fawning or thunderously bitchy. Some select lines that made me lol:

“Any painter who uses black as a color should pay a royalty to Spain.”

Of a Met Velazquez show: “He is profound but in ways that seem to say, ‘Isn’t everybody?’”and also “I’m ready to believe Met director Philippe de Montebello when he crows in the catalogue that this show fulfills ‘an unrealizable dream.’ But when I have unrealizable dreams, they tend to be, you know, fabulous.”

On Sally Mann and Larry Clark’s photographs: “It’s art because otherwise it would be unforgivable.”

On the “social issues” show texts in a Gonzalez-Torres show: “why do artists put up with the it? Only artists and zoo animals, that I can think of, regularly suffer the indignity of being bracketed with officious verbiage in on-site labels. Both should bite their keepers.”

On David Hockney: “A wit like Hockney needs conventions in the way outlaws, as opposed to revolutionaries, need laws.”

On a review of his own writing: “In an otherwise fantastically generous essay on me in the New York Review of Books, the critic-as-artist Sanford Schwartz decided that my writing was more fun before I joined the New Yorker. For all I know, that’s true. But I’m not going to complain about working at the New Yorker.”

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The collection of essays by the late art critic Peter Schjeldahl, entitled Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018, is a collection of several of the best-written essays by Peter Schjeldahl, which he wrote between 1988 and 2018. The essay collection was edited by the artist and writer Jarrett Earnest, a friend of Schjeldahl, who wrote the introduction. The collection, Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018, is entitled Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, due to how Jarrett Earnest organized Schjeldahl’s essays, “the groupings are based on affinities among the topics addressed or the tenors of response that they elicit” (Earnest 2). Earnest goes on to write, “for instance, the catalogue essay, 'Concrete and Scott Burton' (Schjeldahl 186-189) belongs in the 'Heavy' section because it’s about gravity. It is flanked by pieces on Richard Serra and Pablo Picasso, generating a dialogue on sculptural form” (Earnest 2). Earnest writes that the categories of Hot, Cold, Heavy, and Light are “meant to be playful, evocative, and not taken too seriously” (Earnest 2). Earnest writes that the beginning essay in the collection by Schjeldahl on silkscreen paintings entitled “Flowers” by Andy Warhol (Schjeldahl 8-11) is “a marvelous essay, demonstrating how works of art, which are both embedded in and slightly apart from the broad culture that we share, are meaningful in our personal lives" (Schjeldahl 2). I read the book on the Kindle. The book has an index. The collection of essays by Schjeldahl showcases his skill as an art critic.
Works Cited:
Earnest, Jarrett. 2019. “Introduction: Seeing as a Contact Sport” in Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018 by Peter Schjeldahl edited by Jarrett Earnest. New York: Abrams Books. Pages 1-6. Kindle.
Schjeldahl, Peter. 2024. The Art of Dying: Writings, 2019-2022. Edited by Jarrett Earnest. New York: Abrams Books. Kindle.

[Carolyn Halliday · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of art writings by the former art critic for the New Yorker, the Village Voice, and other publications. Schjedahl is delightful, enthusiastic, honest, accessible, and an outstanding writer whose descriptions I couldn't stop underlining or marking. I don't care at all about the way the book was organized. I just randomly selected various artists, most who were familiar to me at some level---well known, barely known, and often shows that I had seen. His assessment of every artisit or topic that I read made me happy to be alive so I can see more art and read more good writing. He described an approach to artists that had left me flat (Modrian for instance) that make me eager to stand before them again in a museum when the pandemic settles. I learned so many tidbits about art history that read a bit like good gossip. Open the book to any page and begin enjoying.

[Conny · Rating 5 out of 5]

A diverse collection of art critic Schjeldahl's essays from the New Yorker and Village Voice, spanning 30 years. They range from detailed, long artist 's portraits, observations on specific shows or art pieces, short or long - or just delightful takes on events or people in the artworld. Sometimes with hostorical context or just his individual impressions and thoughts - but always accessible, never snobby or elitist.
Makes me look at art a new way, even knowing most of the artworks.

The order is a bit arbitrary, not in timeline but arranged in the 4 elemental blocks: Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light. But then, the artists, shows and publishing dates don't follow strict laws either.

[Jomar Canales Conde · Rating 4 out of 5]

When describing Velázquez’ Las meninas, Schjeldahl envisions the space where the glowering infanta looks down on us all with her supreme indifference as “...cylindrical, swooping around behind figures and out into your space. Time lives in it, as everything turns. Often, when the eyes of a subject meet yours, they will just have done so: click.”

That is precisely the magic of Schjehdal’s writing. It is like you are pulled into this space where there is only you, him, and the art he loves: for he loves, unabashedly and enthusiatically. And he says to you: look. And the writing clicks, and everything turns.

[Glen Helfand · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book sat on my coffee table, and my GR list for over a year. It's difficult to figure the way of reading such an extensive collection in one voice. There is just so much art writing one can take. Particularly at a moment when the whole field is in such a state of reformation. This book has a time span of thirty years noted on the cover. This is history-- and in an essay on criticism that closes the book, Schjeldahl wisely notes of critics that "Inevitably, if not terminally, they become dated." It's interesting to see whose art holds up, but also whose writing.