Jed Perl’s “New Art City” (Alfred A. Knopf) is a history of American art in the postwar period as well as “a counter history,” said the New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier. Speaking with the author Monday at the 92nd Street Y, Mr. Wieseltier said Mr. Perl’s book was written out of deep dissatisfaction with the typical narrative about modern art that one encounters and described the book as a revision on the standard history that discovers new connections and kinships between artists, such as Fairfield Porter and Donald Judd, as well as by restoring reputations of unjustly neglected ones. That is why the book is so large, Mr. Wieseltier said, because so much had been left out of standard accounts of the period.

Mr. Perl confirmed Mr. Wieseltier’s comments. He said he had begun to feel that painters such as Leland Bell and Leonard Anderson – even when they were written about – “were always regarded as special cases.” He added, “they were all somewhere to the side,” not part of a story that had any kind of coherence. Even when these painters were previously celebrated, it was a “celebration in isolation.” Mr. Perl said this was a consequence of the art world’s idea of the “five best” painters, which narrows the outlook at any given time.

Part of the evening’s conversation was concerned with certain artists whose reputations Mr. Perl had resuscitated in the book.The two also spoke of the flamboyant John Graham and “gruff but lyric” painter Earl Kerkam. “How big is Kerkam?” Mr. Perl pondered. “I think at this point we don’t know because there’s nowhere you can go look at Kerkam and go back a month later.”

Mr. Wieseltier inquired about the proper role of the critic. Mr. Perl said the first question he asks when visiting a gallery, is “Does something come from the work that holds me?” It can come from nearly anything, he said. After experiencing something, he said, such as after seeing a movie, “You talk about it. A critic is a person who conducts that conversation in public.” He said the mark of a marvelous critic is one whose writing, even when the reader sometimes disagrees totally, makes it nevertheless “comprehensible what they’re responding to and you understand their thinking and you as a reader are responding to them.” Good critics, he said, engage the reader in a heated, impassioned, and lucid conversation.

Mr. Wieseltier said part of a critic’s duty and responsibility was, in the event of discovering a book or show that is pernicious, to damage the fortunes of that artist’s or writer’s career. Mr. Perl agreed, adding “not the kind of damage that knocks it out that day,” but deep damage that people are worried about months and years later. Mr. Perl said he found it hardest to write an extended attack on work he truly disliked – it’s much more fun to celebrate art that he likes, he said.

Returning to the issue of negative writing, Mr. Wieseltier asked about Mr. Perl’s refusal to recognize painter Jasper Johns as “the world-historical figure that he is up and down Fifth Avenue.” Mr. Perl said Mr. Johns’s technique involves “a two-step operation” where he takes an object like a flag and applies his treatment of loose brushstrokes. He described this work as “empty elegance.”

Conversation later turned to the recent building boom in museums. Mr. Perl suggested this was happening because museums think they can generate excitement and raise money by expanding. He said the increase in building size has affected even smaller museums, such as the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Phillips Collection, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Mr. Perl later reflected on the situation of young artists today. He expressed concern that master’s programs have become an arm of the art world and said that today, unlike thirty years ago, there is more anxiety among middle class parents, worried about their children entering art careers that may not work out financially.

gshapiro@nysun.com