It is becoming evident to me that I'd read read about something than experience it. Take painting for instance. I have little patience with an art gallery -- my legs grow as bored as my eyes walking room to room, dodging the poseurs and tourists -- I find it completely uncomfortable to stare at paintings on a wall for hours, all that standing, all that taking of little steps to move in closer and move from one side of a canvas to the other.
But I like very much to read great writers talking about paintings. And Schjeldahl is one of them (seems to be in the Ashbery school of art criticism, which I'm also a fan of.) Such close, imaginative, lively, informed thinking makes an artist and his work and his life a thousand times more interesting to me.
The show was conceived on the Planet of the Scholars, where every question is considered except "So what?" [178]
I began to imagine the artist's [Picasso's] pictures as a steamrolled sculpture. [190]
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