Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings 1988-2018
Peter Schjeldahl, Edited with an Introduction by Jarrett Earnest
Abrams Press (June 2020)

“A lot of education is like teaching marching; I try to make it more like dancing.” Peter Schjeldahl

With regard to the title and organization of this book, Jarrett Earnest assumes full responsibility: To accommodate “the full spectrum of tone and attitude, I’ve scrambled the hundred items chronologically, as befits a critic who defines ‘contemporary art’ as ‘every work of art that exists in the present moment — five thousand years or five minutes old.’ The groupings are based on affinities among the topics discussed or the tenors of the response they elicit. For instance, the catalogue essay ‘Concrete and Scott Burton’ belongs in the ‘Heavy’ section because it’s about gravity…All of which is to say that these categories are meant to be playful, evocative, and not taken too seriously.”

After reading or re-reading any of Peter Schjeldahl’s essays about a painter with which I am already familiar, I recall a passage in T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” in Chapter 2 (“Little Gidding”):

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all of our exploring
Will be to arrive at where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

Many of these artists whom he helps me to see anew are discussed in the hundred essays reprinted in this anthology.  For example, Andy Warhol. I now plan to check out Blake Gopnik’s new biography of him.

According to Earnest, “Schjeldahl has enriched the sensibilities of several generations by narrating his own process of looking, thinking, and feeling — making it seem like something that anyone with a pair of eyes and an open heart can do.” More often than not, that has certainly been his impact on me.

Moreover, although I did not recognize about a third of the artists discussed in this volume, much less know anything about them, I was fascinated by Schjeldahl’s use of that “process” when discussing them and their work. He seems to say, “Here’s what caught my eye…” or “Here’s what I was thinking about when I looked at…” It could be Van Gogh’s portrait of Joseph Roulin or Warhol’s grave or Picasso’s sculpture or the Van Eyck altarpiece in the Villa Chapel of the St. Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. He’s quite a dancer. Sometimes his eloquent as as well as ]ively narrative seems to prance.

In the final chapter, “Credo: The Critic as Artist,” offers to his reader a companionship “in imagination. A relationship conducted with a full view on the world but a step away from it, as an exclusive compact of mutual devotion.”  I shall continue to cherish the pleasure of his company.

My frequent trips to the Cleveland Museum of Art ended with the arrival of COVID-19. Soon, I hope, I will be able to resume my visits which are certain to be  even more interesting because of what Peter Schjeldahl has helped me to see or to see more clearly. As soon as possible, I also plan to re-read Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light. It is as a special gift from someone from whom there is yet so much more to learn.

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