Peter Schjeldahl

Peter Schjeldahl
Name	Peter Schjeldahl
Birth date	February 9, 1942
Birth place	Fargo, North Dakota
Death date	October 21, 2020
Death place	New York City, New York
Occupation	Art critic, poet, author
Years active	1960s–2020
Known for	Art criticism, poetry, essays

Peter Schjeldahl

Peter Schjeldahl was an American art critic, poet, and essayist noted for his long tenure as chief art critic at a major New York magazine and for influential criticism across newspapers, journals, and exhibition catalogs. He wrote extensively on modern and contemporary art, engaging with painting, sculpture, performance, and architecture through vivid prose and accessible criticism. Schjeldahl's career connected him to major artists, museums, galleries, and cultural debates in cities such as New York City, Paris, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Early life and education

Born in Fargo, North Dakota, Schjeldahl grew up in a family with Norwegian-American roots and moved during childhood to the Midwest (United States). He studied at a liberal arts college and pursued graduate work in literature and art history, encountering figures and institutions such as Barnard College, Columbia University, and museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. His formative years overlapped with postwar movements including Abstract Expressionism, the rise of Pop art, and the institutional expansion of venues such as the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Career

Schjeldahl began publishing poetry and criticism in the 1960s and contributed to journals and periodicals such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Artforum, and The Village Voice. He served as features editor and art critic at alternative weeklies connected to scenes in SoHo, Manhattan and documented exhibitions at galleries associated with dealers like Leo Castelli and Gagosian Gallery. Over decades he reviewed shows at major institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern, and he wrote essays for catalogs accompanying retrospectives of artists such as Jasper Johns, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Agnes Martin, Cindy Sherman, Donald Judd, Richard Serra, and Louise Bourgeois.

His editorial and critical positions put him in conversation with curators and critics including Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, Roberta Smith, Jerry Saltz, and Rosalind Krauss, shaping public reception of movements like Minimalism, Conceptual art, Performance art, and Postmodernism. He reviewed international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, the Documenta exhibitions in Kassel, and museum projects in Berlin and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Writing style and critical approach

Schjeldahl's prose combined poetic sensibility with journalistic clarity, frequently invoking comparisons to poets and critics such as T. S. Eliot, John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Susan Sontag, and Roland Barthes. He favored first-person observation and conversational tone while engaging theoretical frameworks drawn from thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Walter Benjamin. His approach balanced evaluation of formal qualities—line, color, scale, and material—with contextual readings involving artists' biographies and institutional histories tied to entities like the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

Schjeldahl often resisted dense academic jargon common in departments influenced by Poststructuralism and Deconstruction, preferring metaphors and literary allusions that connected work by artists such as Piet Mondrian, Willem de Kooning, Marcel Duchamp, and Mark Rothko to broader cultural currents. His criticism engaged debates about authenticity, commodification, and public meaning that intersected with the practices of collectors and patrons such as Saul Steinberg and institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Major exhibitions and notable reviews

Across five decades Schjeldahl reviewed landmark exhibitions by artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Brice Marden, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Robert Rauschenberg, and Yayoi Kusama. He wrote prominent reviews of retrospectives at the Whitney Museum, surveys at the National Gallery of Art, and thematic shows organized by curators connected to the New Museum and the Tate Modern. His essays on solo exhibitions at galleries such as Dia Art Foundation and the Guggenheim Bilbao were widely cited, and his criticism of biennials—Venice Biennale, São Paulo Art Biennial—influenced public debates about curatorial practice and institutional priorities.

Notable pieces addressed controversies over acquisitions and deaccessions at museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, as well as polemics concerning public art projects in cities like Chicago (including works by Anish Kapoor and Jeff Koons). His obituaries and tributes for artists including Philip Guston, Louise Bourgeois, and Ellsworth Kelly mixed personal reminiscence with historical synthesis.

Awards and honors

Schjeldahl received major recognitions from cultural institutions and literary organizations, including prizes associated with the PEN America awards, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and distinctions tied to the National Book Critics Circle and the Pulitzer Prize community. He was honored by museum boards and academic centers connected to Columbia University School of the Arts, the School of Visual Arts, and the Pratt Institute. Professional honors also came from critic societies and foundations such as the Lila Acheson Wallace programs and municipal arts councils in New York City.

Personal life and legacy

Residing primarily in New York City, Schjeldahl's friendships and disagreements with artists, curators, and critics shaped generations of art discourse involving figures like Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Robert Smithson, and Eva Hesse. His poetry collections and essays were taught in courses at institutions including Yale University, New York University, and University of California, Berkeley. After his death in 2020 he was commemorated in obituaries by outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and Artforum, and his writings continue to appear in museum publications and anthologies alongside those of critics like Michael Fried and Hal Foster.

Category:American art critics Category:American poets Category:1942 births Category:2020 deaths