Jed Perl

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.{{cite book|last=Perl|first=Jed|title=New Art City: Mid-Century in Manhattan|year=2006|publisher=Random House|location=New York|isbn=9780307538888|page=6}} 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."{{cite web|url=http://canononline.org/archives/spring-2011/faculty-interview-jed-perl-liberal-studies/|title=Faculty Interview: Jed Perl, Liberal Studies|date=Spring 2011|work=Canon: The Interdisciplinary Journal of The New School for Social Research|access-date=19 April 2014}}

Perl became one of the art critics at The New Criterion soon after its founding in 1982. From there he went on to editorial appointments at Art and Antiques, Salamagundi, Vogue, and Modern Painters before joining The New Republic in 1994. His essays have appeared there regularly since then.{{cite magazine|url=https://newrepublic.com/authors/jed-perl|title=The New Republic: Jed Perl|magazine=The New Republic |access-date=19 April 2014}}

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.{{cite web|url=http://www.heliker-lahotan.org/about.html|title=About the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation|access-date=19 April 2014}} 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.{{cite magazine|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/you-must-change-your-life|last=Perl|first=Jed|title=You Must Change Your Life|magazine=The New Republic|date=6 August 2009|access-date=19 April 2014}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pPeNZwEACAAJ|title=John Heliker: Drawing on the New Deal, 1932-1948|isbn=9781936205325|access-date=20 April 2014|last1=Heliker|first1=John|last2=Lewis|first2=David Alan|year=2011|publisher=Stephen F. Austin State University Press }}{{cite web|url=http://www.sfasu.edu/5745.asp|title=SFA to open exhibition of rarely seen works by John Heliker|access-date=20 April 2014}}

Perl teaches at the New School for Social Research.{{cite web|url=http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/visit/calendar/2014-02/lecture-jed-perl/|title=Lecture: Alexander Calder, Jed Perl|work=Princeton University calendar|access-date=19 April 2014}} His two-volume biography of Alexander Calder was published in 2017 and 2020.{{cite web |title=Penguin Random House, Calder: The Conquest of Time |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/129629/calder-the-conquest-of-time-by-jed-perl/ |access-date=2021-04-24}}{{cite web |title=Penguin Random House, Calder: The Conquest of Space|url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545983/calder-the-conquest-of-space-by-jed-perl/ |access-date=2021-04-24}}

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.

{{quote|text=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.{{cite magazine|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/laissez-faire-aesthetics-what-money-doing-art-or-how-the-artworld-lost-its-mind|title=Laissez-Faire Aesthetics; What money is doing to art, or how the artworld lost its mind|magazine=The New Republic|date=5 February 2007|access-date=19 April 2014}}}}

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."{{cite web|url=http://hyperallergic.com/102618/jed-perls-magicians-charlatans-in-an-ailing-art-world-the-best-discoveries-can-stir-the-soul/|title=Jed Perl's Magicians & Charlatans: In An Ailing Art World, the Best Discoveries Can Stir the Soul|work=Hyperallergic|date=11 January 2014|access-date=19 April 2014}}

His father was Martin Lewis Perl, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton.{{Cite news |last=Overbye |first=Dennis |date=2014-10-03 |title=Martin Perl, 87, Dies; Nobel Laureate Discovered Subatomic Particle |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/science/martin-perl-physicist-who-discovered-electrons-long-lost-brother-dies-at-87.html |access-date=2022-05-30 |issn=0362-4331}}

{{Expand list|date=June 2020}}

• {{cite book |author=Perl, Jed |title=Authority and Freedom |year=2022 |publisher=Knopf Publishing Group |location= New York |isbn=9780593320051 }}
• {{cite book |author=Perl, Jed |title=Calder: The Conquest of Space |year=2020 |publisher=Penguin Random House |location= New York |isbn=9780451494115 }}{{cite news|author=Hartle, Terry W.|date=April 17, 2020|title=Review of Calder: The Conquest of Space by Jed Perl|newspaper=The Christian Science Monitor|url=https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2020/0417/Alexander-Calder-upended-the-seriousness-of-art}}
• {{cite book |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1 |title=Calder: The Conquest of Time|year=2017 |publisher=Penguin Random House |location= New York |isbn=9780307272720 }}{{cite news|newspaper=New York Times|author=Cotter, Holland|author-link=Holland Cotter|date=December 1, 2017|title=Review of Calder: The Conquest of Time by Jed Perl|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/books/review/calder-biography-conquest-of-time-jed-perl.html}}
• {{cite book |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1 |title=Magicians and Charlatans: Essays on Art and Culture|year=2012|publisher= Eakins Press Foundation|location= New York|isbn=978-0871300690}}
• {{cite book |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1 |title=Antoine's Alphabet: Watteau and His World|url=https://archive.org/details/antoinesalphabet0000perl|url-access=registration|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|year=2008|location=New York|isbn=978-0307385949}}
• {{cite book |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1 |title=New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|year=2005|location=New York|isbn=978-1400041312|url=https://archive.org/details/newartcity00perl}}
• {{cite book |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1 |title=Eyewitness: Reports from an Art World in Crisis|publisher=Basic Books|year=2000|location=New York|isbn=978-0465055203|url=https://archive.org/details/eyewitnessreport00perl}}
• {{cite book |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1 |title=Gallery Going: Four Seasons in the Art World|publisher=Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich|year=1991|location=San Diego, CA|isbn=978-0151342600|url=https://archive.org/details/gallerygoingfour0000perl}}
• {{cite book |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1 |title=Paris Without End: On French Art Since World War I|publisher=North Point Press|year=1988|location=New York|isbn=978-0865473133|url=https://archive.org/details/pariswithoutendo00perl}}

• {{cite magazine |author=Perl, Jed |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/116839/maximo-caminero-smashes-ai-weiwei-vases-channeling-dada|title=The Newest Protest Art is the Destruction of the Old Protest Art|date=4 March 2014|magazine=The New Republic}}
• {{cite magazine |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/115658/balthus-cats-and-girls-met-review|title=Don't Bowdlerize Balthus's Paintings—Or His Mystical Ideas: An artist's restless mastery|date=29 November 2013|magazine=The New Republic}}
• {{cite magazine |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/114199/impressionists-water-legion-honor-museum|title=Why the Impressionists Still Matter|date=8 August 2013|magazine=The New Republic}}
• {{cite magazine |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/art/108050/michelangelo-the-dream-the-frick-collection|title=Michelangelo's Most Haunting Drawing Comes to New York|date=3 October 2012|magazine=The New Republic}}
• {{cite magazine |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/103068/susan-sontag-journals-notebooks-consciousness-harnessed-flesh|title=The Middle Distance|date=4 May 2012|magazine=The New Republic}}
• {{cite magazine |author=Perl, Jed |author-mask=1|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/the-picture/100765/tom-sachs-decline-spengler|title=The Pernicious Talk of Decline In the Arts|date=15 February 2012|magazine=The New Republic}}

• {{Timeline-event|date=2010|event=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship}}{{cite web|url=http://www.gf.org/fellows/16843-jed-perl |title=Jed Perl - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation |access-date=19 April 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140419234430/http://www.gf.org/fellows/16843-jed-perl |archive-date=19 April 2014 }}
• {{Timeline-event|date=2010|event=Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellowship}}{{cite web|url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/News/GC-News/Detail?id=5923|title=Press Release: Leon Levy Center for Biography Announces 2010-2011 Fellowships|access-date=19 April 2014}}
• {{Timeline-event|date=2005|event=National Magazine Award Finalist in Reviews and Criticism}}{{cite web|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/american-society-of-magazine-editors/the-best-american-magazine-writing-2005/|title=The Best American Magazine Writing 2005|work=Kirkus Reviews|access-date=19 April 2014}}
• {{Timeline-event|date=2005|event=Judith Rothschild Foundation Award}}{{cite web|url=http://www.nysun.com/arts/arts-desk-2005-03-16/10681/|title=Arts Desk|first=Kolby|last=Yarnell|work=The New York Sun|access-date=19 April 2014}}
• {{Timeline-event|date=2003|event=Marian and Andrew Heiskell Visiting Critic Award, American Academy in Rome}}{{cite web|url=http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=4581&b=merrill#.U1K_2Y8Vbw0|title=Jed Perl Named Recipient of Journalist Award|work=Artdaily.org|access-date=19 April 2014}}

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.

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Category:Living people

Category:1951 births

Category:American art critics

Category:Columbia College (New York) alumni

Category:The New York Review of Books people