Dear Reader,
Who is Peter Schjeldahl, you may ask? He was an extraordinary
art critic and poet, although he is better known as the former,
not the latter. Schjeldahl succumbed to cancer in October 2022.
His regular feature in The New Yorker was something I
looked forward to with the same need and passion he poured into
his columns.
Both subjective and objective about his criticism, in his final
analysis, he could find more good than bad about any art he
chose to write about. The reason was that Schjeldahl loved art
unconditionally. Consequently, when he wrote about art, he made
me love it more, if that were possible. Once I disagreed with
him so vehemently, I wrote a faux email to set him straight.
Afterward, I still didn’t agree with him but appreciated
more the fact that his writing had the power to do that.
His daughter, Ada Calhoun, wrote a memoir about him (Also
a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father and Me). He was not
the Super Dad model one could have hoped for. It seems best
to leave judgments about him to his family, friends, and colleagues.
For the rest of us, Schjeldahl’s legacy is his work. In
addition to books and magazines, there are interviews online.
If you want and need to learn more about art à la Schjeldahl,
immersion therapy is a click away.
These days, when I open The New Yorker and scan the contents
to see if there is an art feature, I know I’m wistfully
searching for his byline. If I can’t travel to an exhibit,
who else will make me feel as if I had? Who else will send me
scurrying to an art book or a dictionary for further study or
illumination? Peter Schjeldahl was the only person I wished
to find standing next to me in a museum. I would not ask him
what he thought about the art, but I would turn and say, “Mr.
Schjeldahl, your writing means everything to me.”
