Peter Schjeldahl Notes Part IV

Selected notes from Peter's teachings on critical writing, continued (click here for Part I, here for Part II and here for Part III):

A gallery front room is a perk for the artist.

The audience for a catalogue introduction is only one person – the artist. It is not a sales brochure.

The definitive weakness of an immature writer is lots of adverbs.

The absolute futility of a generation of art critics that assumed Warhol's work was ironic. He was innocent and greedy (A statement that is insulting to the middle class.)

The difference between humor and satire: Satire is always reformist.

Never use the word "problematic." It's the archetypal academic dodge. Its semantic sense is unsound. There's something unhealthy here. As a writer, everything should be spelled out.

[When looking at a] Cindy Sherman [photograph (or any work of art), we have a] three-step response:

1. Shock and/or delight.
2. [The work] falls apart and becomes nothing.
3. The original illusion returns, integrated with the artifice, and you're aware of it as a made thing, and it becomes beautiful. Everything works to the common good, nothing gets in anything's way. [The work] reconstitutes itself at a higher level.

To be continued.

Cindy Sherman photograph via Elizabeth Avedon.