Peter Schjeldahl, New York Art Critic With a Poet’s Voice, Dies at 80 - The New York Times

Peter Schjeldahl, a professional whose elegant reviews successful The New Yorker and, earlier that, The Village Voice, made him an indispensable usher to modern art, died connected Friday astatine his location successful Bovina, N.Y. He was 80.

His wife, Brooke Alderson, confirmed his death. Mr. Schjeldahl was diagnosed with terminal lung crab successful August 2019 and had undergone unexpectedly palmy immunotherapy but ne'er recovered entirely, she said.

Few critics could lucifer Mr. Schjeldahl (pronounced SHELL-doll) for his intimate cognition of New York’s creation world, which helium wrote astir with undiminished enthusiasm for much than fractional a century. Even less could rival him for sheer eloquence. A writer by vocation successful his earlier years, helium brought an exquisite connection consciousness to his polished essays, which managed to construe ocular subtleties into lapidary prose.

With a deft flick, helium wrote of Ingres’s “glassy, scintillating precision”; of Caspar David Friedrich’s “twilight that sears”; and of the “adagio loops and wristy flares” successful Willem de Kooning’s aboriginal paintings. He had a acquisition for the neat aperçu. “Dadaism was an ancestral vein of cool,” he erstwhile wrote successful The New Yorker. “Those who wondered what it meant could ne'er know.”

Mr. Schjeldahl had nary theoretical programme to advance, nary overarching mentation of creation past and, successful fact, nary existent impulse to walk judgment. “In a way, the advancement of opinions is the slightest absorbing happening astir disapproval for me,” helium told the online diary Blackbird successful 2004, “but it’s 1 of the essentials to motorboat you into a situation, into a conversation.” He called himself “just different creation person with much clip and leisure.”

He was archetypal and foremost a ocular pleasance seeker, connected the prowl for caller thrills, and a diligent chronicler of the shifting trends successful New York’s creation scene. In The New York Review of Books successful 2009, Sanford Schwartz called him “our champion — our astir perspicacious and wittiest — creation critic.”

His penchant for unstinting, sometimes effusive praise made him look astatine times much instrumentality than critic. Roger Kimball, the exertion of The New Criterion, dismissed him as “a barometer of chic taste,” portion conceding that helium was often “witty and not infrequently astringently perceptive.”

When roused, Mr. Schjeldahl could fto alert with a well-aimed zinger. The Pompidou Center successful Paris, he erstwhile wrote, “feels similar a normal halfway connected the verge of a tense breakdown.” He ridiculed the proliferation of “masterpiece” depository exhibitions with the imagined “Masterpieces of Mesoantarctic Lint.”

He usually managed to find his mode to appreciation, against sometimes daunting odds.

“My archetypal glimpse astatine the amusement told maine it was junk,” helium wrote successful The Village Voice successful 1991, reviewing a amusement of thrift-store paintings. “With my 2nd glance, I was successful heaven.” He had benignant words for Norman Rockwell and Victorian paintings of fairies.

Peter Charles Schjeldahl was calved connected March 20, 1942, successful Fargo, N.D., and grew up successful tiny towns successful North Dakota and Minnesota. His father, Gilmore, known familiarly arsenic Shelly, was an inventor and entrepreneur whose institution manufactured machines for making integrative bags and aboriginal produced NASA’s archetypal communications satellite, Echo I. Peter’s mother, Charlene (Hanson) Schjeldahl, worked arsenic her husband’s bureau manager.

Peter attended Carleton College successful Northfield, Minn., but dropped retired aft his sophomore year. He recovered enactment astatine The Jersey Journal successful Jersey City, N.J., spending his disconnected hours immersed successful the creator satellite of Manhattan’s Lower East Side and attending Kenneth Koch’s poesy store astatine the New School. After returning to Carleton, helium and a classmate founded Mother, a diary showcasing the poesy of the New York School, of which helium present counted arsenic a inferior member.

He went connected to people respective volumes of poetry. “Since 1964: New and Selected Poems,” a postulation drawn from respective volumes of his verse, was published successful 1978. Soon after, helium told Interview magazine, “the creation disapproval ate the poetry.” But poetry, helium wrote successful the instauration to “Let’s See: Writings connected Art from The New Yorker” (2008), had instilled successful him the wont of “tracking information by ear, stalking surprise, not knowing what I person to accidental until I’ve said it.”

Mr. Schjeldahl near Carleton successful 1964 without taking a grade and headed disconnected to Paris, wherever helium discovered a passionateness for art, peculiarly painting. After returning to New York a twelvemonth later, connected an impulse helium called Thomas B. Hess, the exertion of Art News, and wangled a occupation arsenic a reviewer, contempt having nary disposable credentials. “Most of what I cognize successful a scholarly mode astir creation I learned connected deadlines,” helium aboriginal wrote, “to dependable arsenic if I knew what I was talking astir — as, small by little, I did.”

He began penning regularly for Art News and, opening successful 1967, for The New York Times, wherever helium occasionally ventured into movie and tv disapproval earlier walking distant from creation penning successful the mid-1970s. It was a little interlude.

“I went backmost erstwhile I recovered determination was thing other I did precise good that they wage you for,” helium told The Brooklyn Rail successful 2015.

A predominant contributor to Art successful America, helium became the creation professional for the New York play “7 Days” successful 1988. After the paper ceased work 2 years later, helium began penning reviews for The Village Voice, wherever helium had concisely been a reviewer successful the mid-1960s. He was named creation professional of The New Yorker successful 1998, and determination recovered himself penning astir the creation of the past arsenic often arsenic specified up-and-comers arsenic the painters John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage.

The alteration of gears did not faze him. “I specify modern creation arsenic each enactment of creation that exists astatine the contiguous infinitesimal — 5,000 years oregon 5 minutes old,” he told The Brooklyn Rail. “We look with modern eyes. What different eyes are there?”

Mr. Schjeldahl had a location successful Manhattan’s East Village arsenic good arsenic successful Bovina, successful Delaware County, wherever helium and his wife, Ms. Alderson, a erstwhile actress, bought a location connected respective acres successful the aboriginal 1970s. For 25 years it was the tract of a celebrated potluck Fourth of July party, with a lavish fireworks display, that attracted hundreds of section residents and a star-studded database of artists, writers and actors. It became excessively fashionable for its ain good, and Mr. Schjeldahl reluctantly rang down the curtain connected it successful 2016.

In summation to his wife, helium is survived by their daughter, Ada Calhoun, an writer who has written a memoir, “Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me,” published successful June; a brother, Don; 3 sisters, Ann Morris, Peggy Schjeldahl and Mary Schjeldahl; and a grandson.

Mr. Schjeldahl wrote galore catalog essays for galleries and museums but ne'er a full-length book. He was, helium told The Toronto Globe and Mail successful 2014, a “miniaturist.” Many of his reviews and essays were collected successful “Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings, 1988-2018,” published successful June 2019, and “The Hydrogen Jukebox,” a postulation of his writings from 1978 to 1990.

After learning that helium had lung cancer, he wrote a good-humored self-elegy successful The New Yorker successful December 2019, nether the header “The Art of Dying.”

“I ever said that erstwhile my clip came I’d privation to spell fast,” helium wrote. “But where’s the amusive successful that?”

Alex Traub contributed reporting.