Peter Schjeldahl knows art, he relishes it, and he sees it with a keen critical eye. He can scarcely write an unmoving line. Take wit:

"Be they ever so cool, Ellsworth Kelly, Andy Warhol, Dan Flavin, and Blinky Palermo can't help stirring the heart, through the eye, with hues as cleanly gladdening as French horns in the morning."

(Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, March 24, 2008, p. 16)

"Courbet's drenching seascapes should come with towels and his steaming nudes with towlettes. He revels in the quiddity of paint: moist dirt. His art isn't about life; it is life precipitated, with raucous panache. Nothing could be better therapy for a bodiless society of cybernetic narcissicisms than the mad wallow of this show."

(Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, March 17, 2008, p. 22)