The Art of Dying

Starred review from April 8, 2024
New Yorker art critic Schjeldahl, who died in October 2022, puts his “almost freakish gift for the English language” (in the words of critic Jarrett Earnest) on full display in this brilliant essay collection. In 2019, the author announced his lung cancer diagnosis in the title essay, which is less a rumination on mortality (“I find myself thinking about death less than I used to”) than a clear-eyed consideration of the art of criticism. Covering such subjects as Edward Hopper, the Storm King Art Center in New York State, and painter Faith Ringgold, Schjeldahl’s essays showcase his pithy eloquence (“Nearly every house that he painted strikes me as a self-portrait, with brooding windows and almost never a visible... inviting door,” he writes of the sense of solitude in Edward Hopper’s paintings); plainspoken enthusiasm (“I loved it!” he exclaims about a 2020 exhibit of French figure drawings at the Clark Art Institute); and willingness to rethink previous judgments and see anew, as he did about the merits of Pop Art painter Peter Saul. Above all, the collection is a testament to Schjeldahl’s unique ability to make tangible art’s emotional effects on the viewer, as in his description of how Peter Saul’s “pictures mount furious assaults on the eye, leaving you with indescribable.... choreographies of one damned thing after another.” This posthumous collection will be a gift to Schjeldahl’s admirers and a revelation to those new to his work.

April 15, 2024
"I want to do everything I would do anyway, with more appreciation," said longtime New Yorker art critic Schjeldahl when asked about the impact of his lung-cancer diagnosis. And so he did, writing 46 virtuoso essays during the last four years of a life of passionate observation and response, years further upended by COVID-19. These profiles and reviews could not be more vital as Schjeldahl embraces art new to him and gives familiar works a "rethink," nor more incandescent with original perspectives, frank and precise exposition, and profound pleasure in language and visual art. Schjeldahl will be missed. Fortunately we had one Schjeldahl treasury, Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings, 1988-2018 (2019); now there's another and it is even more enthralling. With a foreword by Steve Martin and introduction by Jarrett Earnest, this is an eye- and mind-opening collection of expert, reflective, rollicking, witty, and resonant critiques of a thrilling array of art and artists, from the old masters to Henri Matisse, Peter Saul, Jasper Johns, Susan Rothenberg, Sam Gillian, and Niki de Saint Phalle. And the title essay is a masterpiece.

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April 15, 2024
Notes on dying from a man who did an excellent job of living. Schjeldahl (1942-2022) was best known as an art critic, a role he held at the New Yorker right up until his death at the age of 80. He made the East Village his home for most of his life, but his roots were in the Midwest--a fact that perhaps explains why he was able to make art accessible without dumbing it down or pandering. The title essay was published after he was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer. The author writes about his life in a discursive style that he has, as an elderly man facing death, surely earned, but these vignettes hang together and offer a portrait of a life spent in search of beauty in an era largely defined by cynicism. Always a keen observer, Schjeldahl manages the neat trick of seeming to place himself outside the frame even when he serves as his own subject. For example, he recounts winning a Guggenheim grant to pen a memoir that never happened because he used that money to buy a tractor--rather than time to write. Relating this story, he quotes Susan Sontag, whom he recounts meeting in another anecdote that seems more self-effacing than it is. This author knows his place in cultural history, and he wants us to remember it; he just doesn't want to brag about it. The rest of this volume includes Schjeldahl's final pieces for the New Yorker, many written during the global pandemic, a time when the author was uniquely equipped to talk about how we might think about art in the face of death. In the foreword, Steve Martin notes, "It's easy to think you can write like Peter, intrepidly flinging words around, but it's dangerous." A gorgeous memento mori from a singular writer.

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