Mask of the Critic – Guernica – Interview with Peter Schjeldahl and Jonathan Santlofer

Peter Schjeldahl and Jonathan Santlofer have been fixtures in the art world for decades, yet before Guernica brought them together for the “impromptu” conversation that follows, they’d never met. The art critic for The New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl was born in Fargo, North Dakota, settled in New York in the mid-60s and began writing criticism for Art News. Before joining The New Yorker in 1998, he was the regular art critic for The Sunday New York Times, The Village Voice and 7 Days. Between 1967 and 1981, he published six books of poetry. His five books of criticism include The Hydrogen Jukebox: Selected Writings (University of California Press, 1991). Of Schjeldahl’s work, The Times Literary Supplement writes, “[Schjeldahl] has a masterly personal voice, flamboyant, witty, lyrical yet often precise; more important, he has an open-hearted attentiveness to the subjects of his criticism and the imaginative spaces around them.” Jonathan Santlofer was first known as an … Read more