Jed Perl

Jed Perl (born 1951) is an American art critic and author in New York City.

Career

Jed Perl initially trained as a painter. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College and also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.^[1] He decided to devote himself fully to criticism in the mid-1980s. "In my twenties I was very involved in making art as well as writing about art," he said an interview, "but in the early 80s I came to what I guess I would describe as a fork in the road, and around 1985 I just decided to stop painting. A lot of people were not that surprised, they felt that’s where I was going."^[2]

Perl became one of the art critics at The New Criterion soon after its founding in 1982.^[2] From there he went on to editorial appointments at Art and Antiques, Salamagundi, Vogue, and Modern Painters before joining The New Republic in 1994. ^[1] His essays have appeared there regularly since then.^[3]

Perl is the former Chairman of the Board of the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation, which is dedicated to the preservation and study of the art of John Heliker and Robert LaHotan and the maintenance of their former home on Great Cranberry Island, Maine as an artist residency.^[4] He was a friend of Heliker's and wrote the foreword for the catalogue of the exhibition "John Heliker: Drawing on the New Deal, 1932-1948" which originated at Stephen F. Austin State University in 2011.^[5][6][7]

Perl teaches at the New School for Social Research and is currently at work on the first full-length biography of the sculptor Alexander Calder.^[2][8]

"Laissez-faire aesthetics"

Perl is a longtime critic of what he sees as financially driven compromise of artistic standards among artists, collectors, galleries, and museums. He coined the phrase laissez-faire aesthetics to describe this phenomenon in a 2007 essay for The New Republic that became the introduction for his 2012 book Magicians and Charlatans.

Amid the gold-rush atmosphere of recent months, however, something very strange has emerged, something more pertinent to art than to money - a new attitude, now pervasive in the upper echelons of the art world, about the meaning and experience and value of art itself. A great shift has occurred. This has deep and complex origins; but when you come right down to it, the attitude is almost astonishingly easy to grasp. We have entered the age of laissez-faire aesthetics.

The people who are buying and selling the most highly priced contemporary art right now - think of them as the laissez-faire aesthetes - believe that any experience that anyone can have with a work of art is equal to any other. They imagine that the most desirable work of art is the one that inspires a range of absolutely divergent meanings and impressions almost simultaneously. ... My problem, I now realize, is not only that I am looking for consistency, it is that I persist in imagining that there is such a thing as inconsistency. The paintings by Currin and Yuskavage that are now going for hundreds of thousands of dollars are engineered for an audience that believes that a work of art can satisfy radically disparate and even contradictory attitudes and appetites, and satisfy them consecutively or concurrently - it hardly matters. A painting is simply what everybody or anybody says it is, what everybody or anybody wishes it to be.^[9]

Edward M. Gomez, reviewing Magicians and Charlatans for Hyperallergic in 2014, wrote, "even if Perl had published only this new book’s introduction ('Laissez-faire Aesthetics') as a pamphlet, it still could have served as something of a manifesto calling for a drastic reconsideration of the art world’s current methods and mores. It’s something of a cri de coeur from a well-informed observer who is deeply disappointed that dollar-value concerns have trumped aesthetic considerations of so much of what comes up for consumption in galleries and venerable museums."^[10]

Books

• — (2012). Magicians and Charlatans: Essays on Art and Culture. New York: Eakins Press Foundation. ISBN 978-0871300690.
• — (2008). Antoine’s Alphabet: Watteau and His World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0307385949.
• — (2005). New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-1400041312.
• — (2000). Eyewitness: Reports from an Art World in Crisis. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465055203.
• — (1991). Gallery Going: Four Seasons in the Art World. San Diego, CA: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. ISBN 978-0151342600.
• — (1988). Paris Without End: On French Art Since World War I. New York: North Point Press. ISBN 978-0865473133.

Selected Essays

• — (4 March 2014). "The Newest Protest Art is the Destruction of the Old Protest Art". The New Republic.
• — (29 November 2013). "Don't Bowdlerize Balthus's Paintings—Or His Mystical Ideas: An artist's restless mastery". The New Republic.
• — (8 August 2013). "Why the Impressionists Still Matter". The New Republic.
• — (3 October 2012). "Michelangelo’s Most Haunting Drawing Comes to New York". The New Republic.
• — (4 May 2012). "The Middle Distance". The New Republic.
• — (15 February 2012). "The Pernicious Talk of Decline In the Arts". The New Republic.

Awards

• 2010 – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship^[11]
• 2010 – Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellowship^[12]
• 2005 – National Magazine Award Finalist in Reviews and Criticism^[13]
• 2005 – Judith Rothschild Foundation Award^[14]
• 2003 – Marian and Andrew Heiskell Visiting Critic Award, American Academy in Rome^[15]

Perl is also the recipient of a Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust Award from the New York Foundation for the Arts and awards from the Ingram Merrill Foundation.^[11]

Notes

1. Perl, Jed (2006). New Art City: Mid-Century in Manhattan. New York: Random House. p. 6. ISBN 9780307538888.
2. "Faculty Interview: Jed Perl, Liberal Studies". Canon: The Interdisciplinary Journal of The New School for Social Research. Spring 2011. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
3. "The New Republic: Jed Perl". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
4. "About the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
5. Perl, Jed (6 August 2009). "You Must Change Your Life". The New Republic. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
6. "John Heliker: Drawing on the New Deal, 1932-1948". Google Books. Retrieved 20 April 2014.
7. "SFA to open exhibition of rarely seen works by John Heliker". Retrieved 20 April 2014.
8. "Lecture: Alexander Calder, Jed Perl". Princeton University calendar. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
9. "Laissez-Faire Aesthetics; What money is doing to art, or how the artworld lost its mind". The New Republic. 5 February 2007. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
10. "Jed Perl’s Magicians & Charlatans: In An Ailing Art World, the Best Discoveries Can Stir the Soul". Hyperallergic. 11 January 2014. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
11. "Jed Perl - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
12. "Press Release: Leon Levy Center for Biography Announces 2010-2011 Fellowships". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
13. "The Best American Magazine Writing 2005". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
14. Yarnell, Kolby. "Arts Desk". The New York Sun. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
15. "Jed Perl Named Recipient of Journalist Award". Artdaily.org. Retrieved 19 April 2014.