Something is off-kilter in the art world lately: no Hilton Kramer. After almost 20 years of weekly front-page appearances in the New York Observer, one of the most outspoken, not to say controversial, figures in art criticism is absent. For several weeks, readers have been wondering: Is he on vacation? Is he ill?

The news is at once more reassuring and (for his fans) more disappointing – Mr. Kramer has moved on. “It’s mainly because of the weekly schedule,” he told me in a recent telephone conversation from his house in Maine. “The constant demand of traveling back and forth to New York and writing on deadline was interfering with the rest of my life.”

I have worked with Mr. Kramer off and on over the years, first at the Observer and currently as an editor at his magazine, the New Criterion. Still, I was eager to check in with him about the decision to conclude his long tenure at the peach weekly and also about his plans for the future.

In 1987, some years after his 17-year run as art critic at the New York Times, Mr. Kramer was invited to contribute to the first issue of the Observer: “I got a call from somebody I didn’t know, who turned out to be [the publisher] Arthur Carter,” he explained. “Having come off of this long stint at the Times, I immediately said, ‘No, I’m finished with papers.'”

Mr. Carter persisted, however, telling Mr. Kramer that Arthur Danto, art critic of the Nation, said he was the best person for the job. “Almost as a joke,” Mr. Kramer told me, “I found myself saying something to him that I never thought I would say to anybody: ‘Well, in that case, make me an offer I can’t refuse.’ And he made it.”

Mr. Kramer’s writing at the Observer became rather more personal, though in many ways it was not significantly different from his writing at the Times. What had changed was the Times itself, he explained: “The Times’ art coverage now is what I would characterize as institution-oriented. … I was writing more from the point of view of the artist and the art community than from the point of view of the institution.”

“I think another difference – and I haven’t thought of it in a long time – is that I myself never had any academic training in art history. When I was an undergraduate or in graduate school, my studies were in literature and philosophy. From a very early period, high school days, I was interested in art and literature and writing about both. I tried, and I think somewhat succeeded, in bringing this kind of personal conversation to my writing.”

Frequently referred to as a “traditionalist” by those who consider the term pejorative, Mr. Kramer has been accused of falling out of touch with contemporary art. A piece in the New York Times Book Review in December titled “State of the Art” suggested that Mr. Kramer hasn’t “engaged with post-1960s art.” To which Mr. Kramer responds: “What would have been more accurate to say is that I wasn’t always enchanted with the kind of art that emerged, beginning with Pop Art and the aftermath of Pop Art. …The audience of Pop Art became a kind of society audience. That was bound to change things.”

While Andy Warhol was being elevated to sainthood in certain quarters, Mr. Kramer found that his interests lay elsewhere. In addition to the Old Masters and eminent Modernists he regularly discussed in his column, Mr. Kramer championed numerous contemporary artists, such as Eva Hesse, Graham Nixon, Alex Katz, Odd Nerdrum, Christopher Wilmarth, Natalie Charkow Hollander, John Dubrow, John Walker, Paul Resika, and many others. His last column for the Observer was on Thomas Sanchez, a painter almost totally unknown in this country. “I always made it a point to write about as varied a number of artists and styles as possible,” he said.

Mr. Kramer has famously found much to criticize in the art world’s recent past. Even so, he acknowledges a number of high points. His recent memorial piece on the curator William Rubin in the Wall Street Journal praised Rubin’s exemplary connoisseurship. Rubin, along with MoMA founder Alfred Barr, brought about the heyday of the Museum of Modern Art, which Mr. Kramer has called “the Louvre of Modernism.”

Another art-world figure whom Mr. Kramer is quick to praise is the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello: “The great turning point for the Metropolitan Museum came with the departure of Thomas Hoving and the coming of Philippe de Montebello,” he said. “Hoving was a total disaster. (I won’t go into his ridiculous charades.) De Montebello struck a note at the outset, indicating not only that he had high standards and an informed intelligence about what he was doing but also that he was in control. I think he really has been, from day one, a great director. And still the greatest art museum director we have.”

Another highlight of the current scene is the centennial exhibition now on view at the Guggenheim of the sculptures and drawings of David Smith, an artist Mr. Kramer knew personally: “I spent a lot of time with him up in upstate New York, at his big place in Bolton Landing. I visited there many times, spent a lot of time up there, had many conversations with him.”

“It was particularly interesting to see how he put together his welded metal constructions. They were preceded by a tremendous number of drawings, and then he would make the component parts of each construction. On the cement floor of what was originally meant to be a garage, he would lay out the parts of the sculptural construction and sometimes draw on the floor. And so, you’d walk into the garage and you’d see a number of pieces which had not yet been welded, but put together almost like a collage. So the collage element was a key to the way he assembled his work.”

Mr. Kramer is currently compiling a collection of his writings from the Observer, the New Criterion, and elsewhere, tentatively titled “The Triumph of Modernism.” I asked him about that title and whether he thought artists were still grappling with Modernism and its legacy. “I think they are grappling with it,” he explained. “I think there is a kind of unacknowledged apprehension in the art world these days that maybe the modernist era is drawing to a close. I think it’s rather premature. Modernism really isn’t about a style, it’s about a whole way of thinking about art.”

And where does that leave postmodernism? “Postmodernism is a very bogus term. I think it mostly applies to kitsch. I don’t know of a single important artist who would ever even allow the term ‘postmodern artist.’ It’s a creation of arts journalists. To me, it’s a polite way of talking about failed art.”

Mr. Yezzi is executive editor of the New Criterion.