Peter Schjeldahl: An Interview

Peter Schjeldahl (b.1942) began writing his “poetical criticism” for Tom Hess at ArtNews in the mid 1960s. He has since written for both popular and specialized publications including The New York Times, Art in America, and The Village Voice, among others. In this interview from 1982, Schjeldahl discusses the critic’s relationship to the artist, the audience, artwork, and the professional community of art critics. He also reads some of his own poetry.Currently, Schjeldahl writes for The New Yorker and various art journals.

“Maybe at the root of the critical impulse is a kind of adolescent outrage of growing up and discovering that the world is not nearly what you’d hoped or thought it might be ... and that the art critic has invented a career of trying to ... move it over ... and make it more habitable for one’s sensibility,” he says in this interview with Robert Storr.

A historical interview originally recorded in 1982 and re-edited in 2003 with support from the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund.