October 15, 1998
Last week, my knee jerking while reading, I sent off the following to the Times:

Dear Editor,
Is it possible for the Times to run an art review without malevolent referral to 1980s production, text, public/non-profit art, social critique, and artists with teaching jobs (academics)? With remarkable and painful consistency, Mr. Pagel and Mr. Knight manage to use current exhibits as props in their campaign to totalize and vilify the complex practices, intents and consequences of a lot of work whose concerns fold the contextual in with the visual. A recent review (10/9/98, David Pagel, “A Little Social Spelunking…”) again uses an otherwise interesting exhibit as an opportunity to characterize artists who partake of non-profit support as ineffectual slugs. In fact, the words Pagel later uses to cowardly refer (names? examples? actual analysis?) to a vaguely described practice are suitable for his own. Antagonistic, cliquish, and the promotion of a greedy, ungenerous and uninspired territorialism very well describe the brand of art writing that’s passing for criticism in the pages of the LA Times and in Art issues. (which publishes the menage of Pagel/Knight/Dave Hickey). I heartily embrace friction, debate, and illuminating critical analysis, but if art in Los Angeles wants to live up to its promotion in the Times then I suggest raising the present level of conservative discourse above the reductive and sophomoric in favor of addressing the art, artists, and audience with the complexity and maturity we deserve.

Laurel Beckman