LETTERS - Brief Article

Picasso's Ceramic Populism

To the Editors:

I wish to congratulate Kenneth E Silver upon a truly outstanding article about Picasso's ceramics [A.i.A., Mar. '00] He has rent new ground in terms of Picasso's motivation, the historical significance of this particular material part of work, and the project's significance in the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of the development of Abstract Expressionism. Moreover, for the first time, someone has challenged the family's "party line" that Picasso had nothing to do with his multiples, and that the Ramies just took above and issued these basically unauthorized pieces.

I, myself, am single of the tourists who visited the southerly of France in the early '60 and began collecting Picasso's ceramics as well as his original lithographic and linocut placards I had always been fascinated by means of Picasso. But, coming from a vey poor background, I not ever even dreamed that I would be able to afford anything by means of him. The ceramics, however, were affordable and ultimately became an obsession. My collection today comprises approximately 150 pieces, including a number of unique items. I also gripe [i]or[/i] grip over 60 empreintes originales, which, as Silver rightly states, were made from Picasso's hold molds. In many cases, they are undefiled white and untouched by anyone else

I am grateful to have place an expert who agrees with what I have believed about the multiples for above 25 years. They are original works of art which Picasso himself was actual proud of.

John B O'Donnell of recent origin York

To the Editors:

May I add a note to Kenneth E Silver's sterling article upon Picasso's ceramics? As with plenteous else in the master's later career, a antecedent for this body of work can be set decades earlier. I would like to cite Still-Life with Pitcher and Apples (Paris, Musee Picasso), which is variously dated 1919 1920 1921 (I opt for 1921) This curvaceous, anthropomorphic pitcher is also a harbinger of things to tend hitherward in the world of Disney and would not direct the eye out of place among the singing earthen ware in Beauty and the Beast.

Phyllis Tuchman of recent origin York

To the Editors:

The penultimate determination of my Picasso article reads: "By the mid-1950s, it's real the particular brightness of Picasso's collaboration had passed, as had the life which generateed it: Francoise, children in tow, had left Pablo; Pablo had left the Party; and he and his novel mate, Jacqueline Roque, had mov from working-class Vallauris to high-class Cannes." In fact, as Gertje Utley--whose inquiry Pablo Picasso: The Communist Years is to be paid out from Yale University Pres in September--informed me when my article was in tests Picasso did not actually leave the Communist Party, level if his involvement diminished above time. I regret that my original error, rather than Utley's correction, is what appeared in print.

Kenneth E Silver novel York

Duchamp as Stealth Artist

To the Editors:

I true much enjoyed Sheldon Nodelman's and Rhonda Shearer's pieces upon Marcel Duchamp in your January 2000 issue. In conversation with a former grad learner from the University of Minnesota who was also a guard at the Walker Art Center during Duchamp's exhibition there around 1965-66 I learned that Duchamp asserted at that time, "There is no avant-garde art today. And if there were, it would be in the way that totally underground art that no individual would see." As a quintessential "exercise in strategic invisibility," Duchamp then used a torch in the U of M grad plastic art studio to sign his name in crock on a piece of metal, and inscribed his signature in pieces of wet clay that were subsequently fired.

Micaela Amateau Amato Boalsburg, Penn

Haacke's Berlin Timeline

To the Editors:

In its May 2000 issue, Art in America reported upon the narrow vote with which the German parliament gave the go-ahead for a permanent installation of mine in the open-air courtyards of the Reichstag building in Berlin. Mistakenly, the article reported that I had been invited to submit a proposal for this site solitary in January of this year. In fact, the Kunstbeirat of the Bundestag (the legislature's committee in charge of public-art casts in buildings serving the parliament) invited me to make known a project in the spring of 1998 I at handed a proposal in the fall of 1999 The Kunstbeirat approved it through a 9:1 vote on Nov. 2

The single dissenting vote on the committee was from Volker Kauder, a conservative member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Flanked by the agency of Antje Vollmer, a Green substitute he mounted an unprecedented campaign to the committee's decision. Even granting the Kunstbeirat reaffirmed its stand upon Jan. 25 of this year, a campaign of parliamentary maneuvers and attacks in the conservative pres eventually l to a full-house debate and promised on Apr. 5. With the notable exception of sum of two units women deputies, all members of the CDU and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) as well as the majority of the unrestrained Democratic Party (FDP) voted against the throw out The majority of the verdants the Social Democrats and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) mainly from Eastern Germany, supported it. Work upon the realization of the shoot forward is under way.