Quote

Artists are sometimes in a position to tell the truth, but they're positioned as a Cassandra. They're gifted with impeccable prophecy and the assurance of never being listened to.

Peter Schjeldahl

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Peter Schjeldahl
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 20
Art Critic
Journalist
Poet
Fargo
North Dakota
Position
Cassandra
Artist
Positioned
Tell
Impeccable
Truth
Prophecy
Sometimes
Assurance
Never
Listened
Gifted
Artists

More quotes by Peter Schjeldahl

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I do have pleasure when I'm writing. I mean, I'm aware of pleasure. And sometimes I make myself laugh, with a joke or something or I feel gleeful.
Peter Schjeldahl
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You don't need everybody to agree with you, but you do need a few people. And by this point I have a fairly high degree of confidence in my judgment, in that I don't doubt my sanity or, even if I do, I don't have to be reassured.
Peter Schjeldahl
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Rembrandt was way ahead of his time. It's as if he was painting an amateur theatrical, or a professional theatrical, in his studio. It's a kind of performance.
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Everything I've learned about art was (a) because I was actually interested, or (b) I was actually interested in covering my ass because of what I was writing about.
Peter Schjeldahl
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Beauty makes us more like ourselves and more like each other.
Peter Schjeldahl
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Comic books, graphic novels, involve constant toggling and it's hard work. You get tired reading comic books, but you never get tired looking at pictures or reading words.
Peter Schjeldahl
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To me, the greatest artists are almost entirely non-verbal.
Peter Schjeldahl
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The artist is a strange being. I think it's safe to say that a real artist is conscious of having a personal singularity that is partly a blessing and partly a curse. An artist enjoys and suffers from isolation. As solitude, isolation can nurture. It can also destroy.
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My problem with political art is not that it's bad art necessarily, but that it is terrible politics.
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Beauty is not a concept. It is the animal joy of the mind.
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It's possible I am the only art critic that a lot of people read. And maybe Robert Hughes, if he's still writing.
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Love and fear, the two strongest emotions we have. It all starts with emotion.
Peter Schjeldahl
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All artists and creative people are basically unhappy people. If you were happy, that would mean you were content with the world as it was and why would you ever want to change it?
Peter Schjeldahl
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The experience of beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. The artist's relation to the object of beauty, how the art makes that happen, is a whole other subject. Beauty is an event. Beauty is something that happens. There is no such thing as a beautiful object or a beautiful woman.
Peter Schjeldahl
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A lot of writers and artists are like chefs who eat their own cooking in the kitchen and then deliver an empty plate with assurances that it's great.
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It's my duty to sell the ideas. But there's always a question when it comes to beauty.
Peter Schjeldahl
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The aesthetic experience has to be given. And beauty is a regular experience of every person - every person who is not clinically depressed!
Peter Schjeldahl
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Everything that would begin to make somebody a good student would tend to make him or her a poor artist, and vice versa.
Peter Schjeldahl
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I find that the mask of the critic is to have distance.
Peter Schjeldahl
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What I want to know from students, and I ask them right away, is, 'What do you want? I don't care what it is. I want to help you get it.
Peter Schjeldahl