July 12, 2019
Longtime New Yorker art critic Schjeldahl (formerly, Village Voice) covers a fruitful and entertaining 30 years of art affairs. There is much here showcasing a cheerfully ecumenical embrace crossing the art spectrum: old masters such as Donatello, Rembrandt, and Velazquez; modernists, including Alice Neel and Sigmar Polke; 19th-century heroes Courbet and Degas; photographers Weegee and Thomas Struth; even cheese vendors such as Frederick Remington. Throughout all this winning variety, the author's witty insightfulness resurfaces to charm readers with engaging turns of phrase, plain assertions, and autobiographical glosses. It's all disarmingly enthusiastic and unswaggering; The essays, some long, others little more than lengthy blurbs, are organized unchronologically around the book's title themes, making this a dip-into type of read best launched from the table of contents toward writing that is indeed hot, cold, heavy, and light. VERDICT A compendium of piquant art prose from a happy, hungry omnivore, and great for aesthetes of all kinds.--Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L.
Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
June 1, 2019
Sheer writerly virtuosity sets him apart, observes Earnest, the nimble editor of this exciting collection of 100 pieces by an exceptionally enjoyable critic who revels whole-heartedly and whole-mindedly in looking at and thinking about art. Schjeldahl, art critic for the New Yorker for three decades, infuses his criticism with warmth and wit, readily expressing feelings and sharing anecdotes in his responses to old masters; twentieth-century standouts, including Keith Haring; and contemporaries such as Kerry James Marshall. He is funny, original, and disarming: If Vel�zquez was a rock singer, he would be Roy Orbison. Schjeldahl crisply illuminates the essence of works as varied and potentially puzzling as the charming paintings of Florine Stettheimer, the disconcerting velocity of Willem de Kooning, photographs by Cindy Sherman, and the cleverly perplexing explorations of two deeply questioning artists he incisively profiles, painter Laura Owens and sculptor Rachel Harrison. With pre-New Yorker pieces republished for the first time and an organizing structure that accentuates Schjeldahl's full spectrum of tone and attitude, this is a rapturous read for art lovers and all who appreciate dynamic critical essays.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)