Latest Peter Schjeldahl Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• For Rembrandt, reality is role-playing.... Everyone is portrayed in relation to a social hierarchy.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Reality, Role Playing, Roles

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Way, Painting, Kind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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

  Artist, Sometimes, Telling The Truth

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• My problem with political art is not that it's bad art necessarily, but that it is terrible politics.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Art, Political, Problem

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Beauty is a physiological reaction. Beauty is not an object.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Reactions, Physiological, Objects

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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

  People, Doubt, Degrees

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• It's my duty to sell the ideas. But there's always a question when it comes to beauty.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Ideas, Duty, Sells

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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

  Beautiful, Art, Eye

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• With art criticism it's difficult to discuss beauty, to assess it, because there's always the possibility that we're insane.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Art, Criticism, Insane

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Beauty makes us more like ourselves and more like each other.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Everybody's got plants, but most are just growing weeds. The cultivated have greater gardens, finer and gaudier gardens.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Weed, Garden, Growing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• You could say that clinical depression is an incapacity to aesthetic response. It's like there's a constant agreement within ourselves, a kind of mutual understanding between ourselves and the world.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Agreement, Understanding, World

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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

  Given, Aesthetic, Persons

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think being interested is really what being civilized is about. I mean, you have to be conscious of everything.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Mean, Thinking, Conscious

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Art is always subject to change in a moment by somebody who's strong enough to shed new light on it.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Art, Strong, Light

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Love and fear, the two strongest emotions we have. It all starts with emotion.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Two, Emotion, Love And Fear

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Art teachers are always the doormats of the previous generation.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Teacher, Art, Generations

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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

  Art, Writing, Covering

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Your medium has to be alive to you, no matter what you do.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Alive, Matter, No Matter What

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I find that the mask of the critic is to have distance.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Distance, Mask, Critics

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Artist, Cooking, Kitchen

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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

  Writing, Mean, Laughing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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

  Book, Reading, Hard Work

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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

  Mean, Artist, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I'm absolutely convinced that people cannot look and read at the same time. Not any more than you can kneel and jump at the same time. It's a completely different physiological setting.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  People, Looks, Different

  Source: www.guernicamag.com