Reason and spirit, Diller + Scofidio

To the Editors:

I am writing in rejoinder to Tom McDonough's reply to my alphabetic character about Diller + Scofidio [A.i.A., Mar. '04]

In my original correspondence, I challenged the widespread selective reading of 19th- and 20th-century art and architecture that favors a strictly rationalist interpretation and unenlighteneds the spiritual inquiry that is an equally important part of these disciplines. A drawn out line of artists such as William Blake, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wassily Kandinsky (whose upon the Spiritual in Art, 1912 is single of the most influential volumes ever written by an artist), Francis Picabia, Barnett Newman, Joseph Beuys, Agnes Martin, James Turrell and Bill Viola, to name sole a representative few, have made real substantial contributions to spiritual investigation and expression. (I commit readers to the 1985 LACMA catalogue The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 for a comprehensive overview of this heritage.)

Contrary to the allegation in Mr McDonough's answer I do not in fact claim that the "stifling of human aspiration" was the throw out of rationalist Enlightenment modernity. I was careful to note in my alphabetic character that the great legacy of the Enlightenment is progres towards our liberation from superstition and autocratic oppression. I then went upon to say that the repression of aft spiritual expression in the name of reason goe too far and is a denial of our innate being. I do not identify myself with the line of "anti-rationalist, anti-modernist cultural critics" to which Mr McDonough alludes. In fact, I affirm the importance of the rational search inherited from the Enlightenment as a lock opener dimension of integrated human exploration.

Obviously, these important topics don't receive as a great deal of public consideration as they merit. I direct the eye forward to future dialogue upon the legacy of the Enlightenment and the responsibility of artists, designers and architects today.

Ron Pompei

fresh York

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