Peter Schjeldahl didn’t set out to be an art critic, but somewhere along the way he found his calling. Having moved to New York in 1965 as a poet and college dropout, he started writing art reviews because that’s what poets did to make some extra money in the ’60s, and, in his own words, “it took.” His career began at ARTnews, but soon enough he was writing for Seven Days, Vanity Fair, and The Sunday New York Times as well. In 1990 he became the art critic at the Village Voice, where he stayed until 1998, when newly appointed New Yorker editor David Remnick called him up and stole him away.

Schjeldahl’s style is unabashedly lyrical and frank. His candor sometimes comes off as scathing, and yet his honesty often balances itself out: He will write openly about his dislike for a work of art in one sentence but remind readers of the larger context for that opinion in the next. His reviews betray his poetic roots through their use of rich adjectives and metaphors, making him perhaps the only art critic who could get away with comparing the 2008 Whitney Biennial to “the muttering of a cast awaiting the inexplicably delayed rise of the curtain.” Schjeldahl’s reviews take his audience on a journey, and reading them, you never quite know where you’re going to end up.

In addition to receiving the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from the College Art Association in 1980, this April Schjeldahl was announced as the winner of the 2008 Clark Prize for excellence in art writing from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. He has also published a number of books of art criticism — all collected essays and columns — and several volumes of original poetry. His latest book, Let’s See: Writings on Art from the New Yorker (see Arthur C. Danto's review from the May Art+Auction), comes out May 27 courtesy of Thames & Hudson.

ARTINFO recently spoke with Schjeldahl to discuss his upcoming book, the job of the critic, and the value of humility.

First of all I was wondering how Let’s See came about, and how you selected pieces for it.

Well, I’d been sort of shopping manuscripts around for some time, and discovering just how thrilled publishers are by the idea of books of essays by art critics — it was humbling. But then, by way of the writer Sarah Thorton it got the attention of Gordon Brown at Thames & Hudson. I hadn’t had a book since a 1994 collection, and I was planning to include a lot of miscellaneous pieces and Village Voice columns. He persuaded me that it would be neater and niftier to just do New Yorker things.

So you just felt like it was time?

Yes, you know, one wants a book. And publishers are always eager to have you write books that you don’t want to write, and I don’t write books. I mean, I’ve tried, but I find that I’m not a book writer.

There was a recent article by Eric Gibson in the Wall Street Journal about the lost art of writing about art. He was talking about how he felt like criticism has sort of fallen into philosophical obscurity. Do you think that criticism today is inaccessible?

Well, I guess I would leave that up to the judgment of readers. I mean, there’s always a lot of philosophical obscurity around. We have a very specialized civilization where the farther inside anything you go, the less you understand. Take shop talk, which can be quite enchanting. It’s great to hear mechanics talking, or even computer geeks, when you understand every fourth word. There’s a kind of poetry to it. But, he said art criticism. Does he have me in mind?

Actually, he wrote not just about criticism but also about the wall text at the Whitney Bienniale—

Oh yes, curatorial babble. My distaste for that is well known. But you know I think there’s been a trend recently against that. I think there’s a lot less of that than there was, and it’s interesting, the New Museum has almost no wall text. Art comes to you through self-education and not education, which I think rather distances it.

Do you think there’s any sort of obligation for the museums, and the critics, to educate viewers, at least a little bit?

I guess what I object to is the implication that education is preparation for something, like you prepare to be a doctor. You don’t prepare to love art. I mean, why would you, in a busy world? And if you love it, if you have a proclivity for it — and not everybody does, and good luck to everybody — you’re going to want information. But you’re going to want it because of your experience, not in order to have the experience. It’s like anything else that exists purely because humans enjoy it. You don’t read the chemical content of candy before you eat it.

This is true, but I think one thing that you do a good job of is providing context. In your review of “© Murakami,” for instance, I appreciated that you said very honestly that you didn’t like it and you didn’t completely get it, but you also put that in the context of not being completely familiar with manga and Japanese culture. It seems like you feel a need to contextualize your opinions.

I think it’s a matter of responsibility to the reader. You position yourself in relation to the work — like, if you happen to be married to the artist, you don’t keep that a secret. Otherwise, there’s a sort of classic idea of the critic as a voice out of a cloud, a pocket Jehovah, which I plainly have no use for.

How do you choose which shows to review?

Well, often it’s sort of obvious — the big shows. I don’t write as frequently as I did for the Voice. I regret not doing more gallery shows.

If there’s ever a smaller show that you really want to review, can you fight for it?

Well, I've done that, though I want to write about what most people want to read about. If I have a criterion [for what shows to review] it’s: What will make the better piece of writing? I think it’s instinct. I want to make something for people to read.

Do you read other critics?

Yes, certain ones, and to keep up, but not too closely. My pal Dave Hickey, I love everything he writes. I read him for pleasure.

There’s a famous quote that I’ve heard, I don’t know who said it, that writing about art is like dancing about architecture.

Well, it is a challenge; try writing about music. The thing is, there’s something really easy about art, which is that it holds still. Almost everything else we think of as an art unfolds in time. The task of description is an essential operation of art criticism, and it’s the thing I work hardest at and that I want to go by the quickest. I want to make it seem really easy and transparent.

But at the end of the day, you think that there is a value to writing criticism? Do you think it contributes something, and that’s why you do it?

I do it because it’s what I do. It’s what I get paid for, and people seem to like it. I think anybody is ahead in life if they adopt an attitude of humility about what they do... You do it the best you can, and the world has use for it or it doesn’t.

Do you own any art?

Oh yeah. Back in the old days it was normal for artists to give artwork to poets, who had no money; artists had a little money. I’ve got a couple of little things by de Kooning and Bruce Nauman, and other treasures.

But now the art market has expanded in this enormous and expensive way…

Yes, I think one of the big lucky things about my career is that for about the first fifteen years of it I was relatively nobody as a critic, because I was identified as a poet. So I got to hang out with artists without any manipulation or self-consciousness: just Peter the poet. And it was a profound education. Now it’s hard because of the pressure of competition and money, and because I’ve moved very far up the food chain.

Do you ever miss writing poetry?

No, not really. That trickled out well over 25 years ago.

What is your favorite show that you’ve seen so far this year?

Courbet at the Met — it’s just astounding.