Peter Plagens (born 1941) is an American artist, art critic, and novelist based in New York City. He is most widely known for his longstanding contributions to Artforum and Newsweek (senior writer and art critic, 1989–2003), and for what critics have called a remarkably consistent, five-decade-long body of abstract formalist painting. Plagens has written three books on art, Bruce Nauman: The True Artist (2014), Moonlight Blues: An Artist's Art Criticism (1986) and Sunshine Muse: Modern Art on the West Coast, 1945-70 (1974), and two novels, The Art Critic (2008) and Time for Robo (1999). He has been awarded major fellowships for both his painting (John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts) and his writing (Andy Warhol Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts). Pla