I would like to be one of the more distant participants in the crowd of those who will have congratulated and thanked Alan Artner (“The Art of Criticism,” June 21). We take the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune as a respite from the culturally degenerating New York Times.
You may not be familiar with my books, but if you were, you would see how much we operate by the same principles. I agree especially on Artner’s way of letting the artwork give its message to the reader.
I am reminded of an experience that goes many years back. Since I had done a book on Picasso’s “Guernica,” I was invited by the Prado to lecture in front of the original painting. At that time, “Guernica” was still at the Lateral de buen retrio, a Parthenon-like sanctuary, all by itself.
There was the masterpiece quietly radiating forth at me talking, as though it was saying: “How are you to talk while I am revealing it by my presence?”
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