Peter Schjeldahl likes to blow stuff up, The Process interview in The Believer

This month in The Believer Peter Schjeldahl and I discuss the profundity of pyrotechnics, in specific his annual display on a hillside in rural upstate New York. I’ve often felt that Schjeldahl, also the New Yorker’s art critic, is an artist himself. He’ll deny any such claims but spends his year planning the action for the next. The Believer’s Process Interview is generally given over to an artists’s discussing the process behind a single piece, so here in our interview he talks about his process and professes such universal truths as:

“People fuss with all these fancy shells, seeking beauty, which is stupid. Fireworks can’t help but be beautiful. Let that take care of itself. Go for intensity.”

And:  

“My if-in-doubt first principle has always been to set off everything as fast as I can. One second of dead time between fireworks is an eternity.”

Not to mention:

“There’s no way you can fuck up with fireworks that someone won’t think is a stroke of genius. It’s pretty hard not to impress people with fireworks. It’s a very forgiving medium, if you trust to the first principle of setting everything off as fast as possible.” 

You can read an excerpt here, but if you buy the issue, the actual real paper copy, you can also read his holding forth on patriotism and why he loves the holiday.