"Peter Plagens" is an American art critic, painter and novelist. From 1989 until 2003 Plagens was a senior writer and art critic for Newsweek. As a novelist Plagens is the author of Time for Robo (1999 Black Heron Press ISBN 0930773543) and The Art Critic which was and is serialized online at artnet. As a painter he has been represented by the Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York.

Plagens lived and worked in California after graduating from the University of Southern California. In 1974, Plagens wrote Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast. For most of the 1970s, Plagens and artist Bruce Nauman had studios on the same block in Pasadena and they played in a weekly Santa Monica artists' basketball game. Plagens also performed in Nauman's 1975 film Pursuit, which features more than 24 minutes of footage of men and women running on a treadmill against a black background, panting desperately into the void while staying in place.

Plagens has lived in New York for many years. He writes about art for the Wall Street Journal and for ArtForum magazine.

More Peter Plagens on Wikipedia.

Can push you a bit to round off the edges of your art.

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Honestly, I never had a market where people were standing in line. So, I wasn't under any pressure to be cranking out something in order to pay for my sports car.

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I like touch. I like to make twists and turns -- but I don't want (my paintings) to be too elegant.

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I like figure-ground (relationships), ... I like shapes. So, gosh darn it, I was going to put a great big turquoise shape on a great big vermillion background. No getting around it.

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