Gemini Rising

With Los Angeles having arrived as a world-class art center, it is unfortunate that the world-class Los Angeles Times is able to offer as their chief art critic William Wilson. It is even more unfortunate that there are, undoubtedly, readers who give credence to his self-indulgent banter.

Whereas the print-making workshop Gemini G.E.L. deserves recognition for its impressive achievement--1,300-plus publications spanning two decades--Wilson inaccurately and inappropriately portrays them as being motivated by profit alone (“The Serious Fun & Profit of Print-Making,” Nov. 8). The National Gallery certainly recognized Gemini’s importance and scooped L.A. in the process.

Wilson’s claim that “a run-of-the-mill Gemini print is . . . posing as a work of art” only impugns the integrity of the artists who work at Gemini. His suggestion that a print is a poor second cousin to a work of “real art” is nonsense; there are effects that an artist can achieve with a print that cannot be achieved in any other medium.

In the final analysis, there are many who, were it not for prints, would never be able to live with a work of art by such giants as those who work at Gemini G.E.L.

RONALD R. WILKNISS

Los Angeles