52 Quotes by Peter Schjeldahl

With art criticism it’s difficult to discuss beauty, to assess it, because there’s always the possibility that we’re insane.

A word is a thought, of course. But any image, including a photograph, may become an instrument of sufficiently lucid cogitation.

Art is always subject to change in a moment by somebody who’s strong enough to shed new light on it.

I can do pretty good work in various short forms, but anything over 1400 words, I’d be of no use. I like to say I’m a river navigator. I need to see the shore behind the shore.

Artists are people who are subject to irrational convictions of the sacred. Baudelaire said that an artist is a child who has acquired adult capacities and discipline. Art education should help build those capacities and that discipline without messing over the child.

Beauty is a willing loss of mental control, surrendered to organic process that is momentarily under the direction of an exterior object. The object is not thought and felt about, exactly. It seems to use my capacities to think and feel itself.

Matisse can make you hate your life for its comparatively insipid joys.

Artists are expected to talk about their work but writers aren’t expected to talk about their writing.

I think being interested is really what being civilized is about. I mean, you have to be conscious of everything.