December 28, 2020 Issue

In the last New Yorker of this uniquely trying year, I’m seeking pleasure. I think I’ve found it – a delicious sentence in Peter Schjeldahl’s “What Are Artists For?” Reviewing MOMA’s “Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented, 1918-1939,” he says,

Art happens when someone wants to do it. Advertising and propaganda start from given ends and work backward to means. There’s just enough genuine art in the exhibition to hone this point. The small Malevich, of cockeyed red and black squares on white, elates. Then there’s my favorite work, which I’d like to steal: a version of the sublimely sophisticated Liubov Popova’s “Production Clothing for Actor No. 7” (1922). A black-caped, robotic figure extends a square red sleeve like a smuggled Suprematist banner. Personal flair and practical use merge.

That “The small Malevich, of cockeyed red and black squares on white, elates” is superb. Even more sublime is Schjeldahl’s description of the Popova: “A black-caped, robotic figure extends a square red sleeve like a smuggled Suprematist banner.” Schjeldahl has been writing inspired lines like that all year. He’s The New Yorker’s supreme pleasure-giver.