“There are these fashions, these trends in a way, of what kinds of ideas people are trying to bring to bear on art and trying to put into practice in their writing, and for better or for worse I’ve often not participated in them,” Roberta Smith confessed in 1988. “I think that I’m interested in trying to open things up without losing sight of the object and of that one-on-one experience.”
This week, Smith announced her
retirement from the
New York Times after thirty-two years, having served the past thirteen as the publication’s co–chief art critic. To mark the occasion,
Artforum revisits her conversation with Ingrid Sischy and Lucas Samaras in the magazine’s February 1988 issue. “When I first started writing criticism I said that I wanted to publish by the time I was 25, and that I wanted to be doing my best work by the time I was 40. . . Having gotten there, I still want to be able to say—this is how you propel yourself forward—that my best work is ahead of me,” Smith said. “We are lucky,” she adds: Unlike athletes, “we’re not forced into retirement at the age of 35 or 65 or whatever.”
—The editors