Postscript: Peter Schjeldahl 1942 - 2022

Peter Schjeldahl (Photo by Gilbert King) 

This is a sad day. I've just learned of the death of Peter Schjeldahl. He died yesterday, age eighty. He’s one of my heroes. If you click on his name in the “Labels” section of this blog, you’ll find 135 references to him. There’s a fine tribute to him on newyorker.com: David Remnick, “Remembering Peter Schjeldahl, a Consummate Critic.” And there’s an excellent obituary in The New York Times: William Grimes, “Peter Schjeldahl, New York Art Critic With a Poet’s Voice, Dies at 80.” Grimes says of him, “He was first and foremost a visual pleasure seeker, on the prowl for new thrills.” I’ll always remember his response to Vermeer’s art: “Looking and looking, I always feel I have only begun to look” (“The Sphinx,” The New Yorker, April 16, 2001). That could serve as his epitaph. 

I’m going to miss Schjeldahl’s writing enormously. Fortunately, he left behind several resplendent collections, including The Hydrogen Jukebox (1991), Let's See (2008), and Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light (2019). I’ll post a longer tribute to him later. He is and always will be one of my touchstones.