The Art of Dying
Writings, 2019-2022
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected May 14, 2024
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- $14.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The complete last essays of acclaimed writer Peter Schjeldahl, the great New Yorker art critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Foreword by Steve Martin
Introduction by Jarrett Earnest
When the New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl published his widely read autobiographical essay “The Art of Dying” in December 2019, he reported that he had lung cancer and his oncologist had given him six months to live, but his experimental treatment was showing some improvement. “These extra months,” he wrote, “are a luxury that I hope to have put to good use.” And he did. The Art of Dying: Writings, 2019-2022 begins with that essay and collects all 46 pieces that he wrote for the magazine before his death in October 2022.
These last works express Schjeldahl’s hard-won reflections on art and life, against the backdrop of an intensely anxious period in America, spanning the pandemic, the George Floyd protests, the 2020 presidential election, and the war in Ukraine. Schjeldahl, who was the leading art writer of his generation, wrote with generosity and openness about the art world during these tempestuous three years.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Yorker art critic Schjeldahl, who died in October 2022, puts his "almost freakish gift for the English language" (in the words of critic Jarrett Earnest) on full display in this brilliant essay collection. In 2019, the author announced his lung cancer diagnosis in the title essay, which is less a rumination on mortality ("I find myself thinking about death less than I used to") than a clear-eyed consideration of the art of criticism. Covering such subjects as Edward Hopper, the Storm King Art Center in New York State, and painter Faith Ringgold, Schjeldahl's essays showcase his pithy eloquence ("Nearly every house that he painted strikes me as a self-portrait, with brooding windows and almost never a visible... inviting door," he writes of the sense of solitude in Edward Hopper's paintings); plainspoken enthusiasm ("I loved it!" he exclaims about a 2020 exhibit of French figure drawings at the Clark Art Institute); and willingness to rethink previous judgments and see anew, as he did about the merits of Pop Art painter Peter Saul. Above all, the collection is a testament to Schjeldahl's unique ability to make tangible art's emotional effects on the viewer, as in his description of how Peter Saul's "pictures mount furious assaults on the eye, leaving you with indescribable.... choreographies of one damned thing after another." This posthumous collection will be a gift to Schjeldahl's admirers and a revelation to those new to his work.
