This was so good!!! I wish I could adequately express how delighted I felt reading this—I also love Schjeldahl and feel that he (and writers with a similar gift for enthusiastic, inviting connoisseurship and appreciation) are really saving art and culture, in a way. That sounds very lofty and grandiose, but what I mean is: it matters a lot when a writer can show someone WHY they should love something, and invite people to have a personal relationship with great/exciting/ambitious/challenging work. Unfortunately, many people (I include my past self in this category) think that it’s the popular, consumable works that are the most fun, and great works are a chore to encounter. Schjeldahl’s great gift was showing people that the great works can also be, very genuinely, fun.
And I think you captured that so perfectly here: “Schjeldahl feels like a reverse poptimist in that when I read him I find myself thinking, it’s completely right and normal to be deeply moved by some seemingly forbidding painter. Not to merely ‘appreciate’ or ‘contextualize’ art but to have an extremely potent emotional reaction.”
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I completely agree, he is a huge inspiration to me as well and my initial false start with this substack was from a period where I was totally infatuated with his perspective on art (and I had a very cramped living situation and was going to art museums a lot to get out of the house, haha).
I was going to ask if you've read his successor at the NYer Jackson Arn but I forgot I had that whole footnote about it -- in the interest of fairness I should say that in the intervening time since I wrote this he has written several essays I liked a lot more.
revisiting this shortly after finishing Hot Cold Heavy Light (on Celine's recommendation of course)...I am so vindicated to hear the Jackson Arn critique somewhere other than my own brain
Haha, tbf I thought he was growing into the role rather nicely before he was dismissed under mysterious circumstances. I guess we’ll never know what could have been.
This was so good!!! I wish I could adequately express how delighted I felt reading this—I also love Schjeldahl and feel that he (and writers with a similar gift for enthusiastic, inviting connoisseurship and appreciation) are really saving art and culture, in a way. That sounds very lofty and grandiose, but what I mean is: it matters a lot when a writer can show someone WHY they should love something, and invite people to have a personal relationship with great/exciting/ambitious/challenging work. Unfortunately, many people (I include my past self in this category) think that it’s the popular, consumable works that are the most fun, and great works are a chore to encounter. Schjeldahl’s great gift was showing people that the great works can also be, very genuinely, fun.
And I think you captured that so perfectly here: “Schjeldahl feels like a reverse poptimist in that when I read him I find myself thinking, it’s completely right and normal to be deeply moved by some seemingly forbidding painter. Not to merely ‘appreciate’ or ‘contextualize’ art but to have an extremely potent emotional reaction.”
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I completely agree, he is a huge inspiration to me as well and my initial false start with this substack was from a period where I was totally infatuated with his perspective on art (and I had a very cramped living situation and was going to art museums a lot to get out of the house, haha).
I was going to ask if you've read his successor at the NYer Jackson Arn but I forgot I had that whole footnote about it -- in the interest of fairness I should say that in the intervening time since I wrote this he has written several essays I liked a lot more.
revisiting this shortly after finishing Hot Cold Heavy Light (on Celine's recommendation of course)...I am so vindicated to hear the Jackson Arn critique somewhere other than my own brain
Haha, tbf I thought he was growing into the role rather nicely before he was dismissed under mysterious circumstances. I guess we’ll never know what could have been.