joe phelan

Tonight on PBS is turning out to an unexpected three hour orgy for art lovers. At least in the Washington DC area.

First there is the two hour special called "Imagining America: Icons of 20th Century Art" beginning at 9 which I have already mentioned in a previous post.

I just checked the Charlie Rose website as I always do around this time of day to see who he's scheduled for tonight's show. Turns out Jed Perl the art critic for the New Republic will be on tonight.

Perl is going to be plugging his big book "New Art City: Manhattan At Midcentury" which is about "greatest generation" of artists in the post World War II years in New York. This is a very good book and Perl is a very good critic. He's serious and passionate about painting, he knows it from studying to be one and being married to a painter, he writes extremely well, he's a hard worker and tireless researcher, and he tells it like he sees it. He famously called Gerhard Richter a "bull ****" painter in the pages of the New Republic.

(Interestingly enough, Perl was a protege of one of my all time favorite movie critics, Pauline Kael who also wrote take no prisoner criticism.)