Notes on Peter Schjeldahl's "Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light"

1. I'm a big fan of Peter Schjeldahl's writing. Reading his new book, Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, is pure nirvana. Among its many pleasures: forty-five of the best New Yorker pieces he’s written since the publication of his last collection – the superb Let’s See; twenty-nine Village Voice pieces – all new to me; twenty 7 Days pieces, including his great “A Van Gogh Portrait” (originally titled “Portrait of Joseph Roulin”); two wonderful artist profiles (“Laura Owens” and “Rachel Harrison”); and his excellent “The Ghent Alterpiece” on the conservation of a fifteenth-century masterpiece. 

2. Of the forty-five New Yorker pieces, I think my favorites are “Zubaron’s Citrons” (originally titled “Bearing Fruit”), “Henri Matisse II” (originally titled “The Road to Nice”), and “The Ghent Alterpiece” (originally titled “The Flip Side”). All three of these pieces contain bravura descriptions of specific artworks. For example, here’s Schjeldahl’s description of Matisse’s The Piano Lesson:

The brushy, big canvas (eight feet high by nearly seven wide) represents Matisse’s son Pierre at an oddly pink-topped piano, his sketchy face inset with a shard of black shadow, in a schematized room: cornerless gray wall; the pale-blue frame of a French window opening onto triangular swatches of green and gray; a salmon rectangle of curtain; and a black window grille that echoes the curlicues in a music rack bearing the instrument’s brand name, Pleyel, spelled out in reverse. There is a lighted candle (indicating that the time of day is dusk), a metronome (indicating time itself), and two earlier Matisses: a small sculpture of a sensual odalisque and a large image from a painting of a stern-seeming woman seated on a high stool, floating free on the gray wall. The philosophical conceit of the quoted works—id and superego, conjoining in music—is pleasant, though a bit arch. Like any successful art, “The Piano Lesson” generates tensions of antithetical qualities—lyrical and harsh, mysterious and blatant, intimate and grand—and resolves them. It’s terrific, but the past century affords many paintings (and not all of them by Matisse and Picasso) that are as good or better. My preference for it is not a considered judgment. It’s a reflex, like the one that twitches when I’m asked my favorite movie, and I automatically, helplessly, say “Psycho.” [“Henri Matisse II”]

That “his sketchy face inset with a shard of black shadow” is ravishing. I relish the way the passage moves from description to commentary (“The philosophical conceit of the quoted works—id and superego, conjoining in music—is pleasant, though a bit arch”). The surprising mention of Psycho at the end makes me smile every time I read it.

Henri Matisse, "The Piano Lesson" (1916)

3. The Village Voice pieces brim with piquant observations. For example: “De Kooning’s keynote is a self-engulfment in painting that demands every resource of wit and skill not to become a mess” (“Willem de Kooning”); “Scanning the details is like being knocked down and getting back up to be knocked down again” (“Picasso and the Weeping Women”); “I left the show with smells of makeup, sweat, and alcohol in my mind’s nostrils and a conviction that Toulouse-Lautrec is now the most living of fin de siècle Frenchmen” (“Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec”); “He activates the occult handshake of aesthetics and sex” (Henri Matisse – I”). Some of the comments are quite funny (e.g., on Lucian Freud: “To tax Freud with misogyny seems pointless, given that he obviously despises and in some sense wants to fuck everybody, himself included”). But if you relish descriptive analysis of specific artworks, as I do, you may find the Village Voice essays somewhat less satisfying than the New Yorker pieces. For instance, compare Schjeldahl’s Village Voice “Caspar David Friedrich” with his New Yorker “Caspar David Friedrich.” In the Village Voice piece, he says,

The buzz of a Friedrich occurs when what have seemed mere tints on a tonal composition combust as distinctly as scented hues – citron lights, plum darks – and you don’t so much look at a picture as breathe it.

That is very beautiful. But in Schjeldahl’s artful hands, it’s just the beginning. Look at what he does with it, ten years later, in The New Yorker:

The pictures don’t give; they take. Something is drawn out of us with a harrowing effect, which Friedrich’s use of color nudges toward intoxication. What at first seem to be mere tints in a tonal range combust into distinctly scented, disembodied hues: drenching purples and scratchy russets, plum darks and citron lights. One doesn’t so much look at a Friedrich as inhale it, like nicotine. Friedrich is an artist of dusky fire, of twilight that sears. It is well worth sticking around for his shuddery pleasures, laced with something cold and weird.

That is mind-blowingly gorgeous!

4. “A Van Gogh Portrait” is unquestionably one of Schjeldahl’s greatest hits. I first read it in his slim 1990 collection The 7 Days Art Columns 1988-1990. Now, twenty-nine years later, it reappears, subtly revised, in Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light. It’s interesting to note the changes. Here’s the brilliant opening paragraph of the 7 Days version:

From a distance, the face is closed, hieratic, and perhaps intimidating. Up close, the eyes seem frightened – they stare without focusing – and the features spread, threatening to lose track of each other. It is a deracinated face in a conflicted picture that is unified by genius, or something. Maybe just by the craft of painting. Decide for yourself when you make the welcoming visit to Portrait of Joseph Roulin by Vincent van Gogh, a new acquisition of the Museum of Modern Art.

Here’s the Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light version:

From a distance, the face is closed, hieratic, and a bit intimidating. Up close, the eyes seem frightened. They stare without focusing. The features spread, threatening to lose track of one another. It is a deracinated face in a conflicted picture that is unified by genius invested in the craft of painting. Decide when you make your welcoming visit to Portrait of Joseph Roulin (1889) by Vincent van Gogh, a new acquisition of the Museum of Modern Art.

“Perhaps intimidating,” in the first line, has been changed to “a bit intimidating.” The second line has been reconstructed: the dashes have been converted to periods; the phrase “and the features spread, threatening to lose track of each other” is now a separate sentence (“The features spread, threatening to lose track of one another”). “Unified by genius, or something” and the next sentence (“Maybe by the craft of painting”) have been combined and revised: “It is a deracinated face in a conflicted picture that is unified by genius invested in the craft of painting.” “For yourself,” in the next sentence, has been deleted; “the” is changed to “your.” 

The paragraph is now more concise. Concision is a hallmark of Schjeldahl’s style. His wonderful description of the Portrait of Joesph Roulin has also been made more concise. Here’s the 7 Days version:

Painted in van Gogh’s Japanese inspired mode, Roulin is boldly contoured against a floral-patterned background. The composition is rife with spiral motifs (rousing the sympathy of the nearby spiral-happy Starry Night) and is keyed to a clash of fresh blue in the uniform and moody green (the background). Variously spiced browns in Roulin’s beard, the forthright yellow-gold of his buttons, and the rust reds and pinks in the flower shapes keep your eye jumping. The overall design is about as hyperactive as relative symmetry can get. Roulin’s flesh is rendered in medievalish green and red hatchings.

Here’s the Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light version:

Painted in van Gogh’s Japanese-inspired mode, Roulin is boldly contoured against a floral-patterned background. The composition is rife with spiral motifs (rousing the empathy of the nearby spiral-happy Starry Night) and is keyed to a clash of fresh blue in the uniform and moody green in the background. Variously spiced browns in Roulin’s beard, forthright yellow-gold in the buttons, and rust reds and pinks in the flower shapes keep your eye jumping. The overall composition is as hyperactive as relative symmetry can be. Roulin’s flesh is rendered in medieval-ish green and red hatchings. 

“Sympathy” has been changed to “empathy.” The brackets around “the background” have been dropped. “Variously spiced browns in Roulin’s beard, the forthright yellow-gold of his buttons, and the rust reds and pinks in the flower shapes keep your eye jumping” has been trimmed to “Variously spiced browns in Roulin’s beard, forthright yellow-gold in the buttons, and rust reds and pinks in the flower shapes keep your eye jumping.” “The overall design is about” is now “The overall composition is.” “Can get” is now “can be.” These are all subtle improvements, illuminating Schjeldahl’s approach to style.

Vincent van Gogh, "Portrait of Joseph Roulin" (1889)

My favourite part of “A Van Gogh Portrait” is the baseball figuration at the end. Here’s the 7 Days version:

So make your first visit to Roulin count. Then observe the work’s action on its peers. The pictures in the same room by Gauguin, Seurat, Munch, Redon, and Rousseau may seem as elated as the teammates of a slugger who, having hit a home run, returns to their midst, with high fives all around.

Here’s the Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light version:

Make your initial visit to Roulin count. Then observe the effect on its peers. Gauguin, Seurat, Munch, Redon, and Rousseau flock like teammates of a slugger who, having homered, returns to their midst with high fives all around.

“So” and “the pictures in the same room” have been deleted. "Effect" has been substituted for "work's action." “May seem as elated” has been changed to “flock like”; “hit a home run” shortened to “homered.” An inspired image has been sharpened.