"The current paradigm demands that a work be at once fairly old and very new. It's a crazy situation."

This is Peter Schjeldahl’s first column as the Voice’s senior art critic.

“In 15 years as a poet, playwright, critic, curator, and universal energy source in the lives of the few hundred most creative people in America, Frank O’Hara had rendered that world wholly unprepared to tol­erate his passing.”

Damn, I am going to miss this place.