Sunday Cover Story

It’s bad enough when mega corporations, the television industry and second-rate artists and illustrators co-opt and “appropriate” the images and/or the sounds of great works of art or music to sell everything from cheap ugly shoes to mental bologna and the blue-collar-beer life style.

But must The Times hasten this philistine trend by using Georges Seurat’s great painting “La Grande Jatte” to illustrate something as banal as overpriced, mindless amusement parks?

I’m not amused. Using great artworks as cartoonish ciphers to sell soap or newspapers doesn’t expand cultural awareness, it just further trivializes the appreciation of real art and increases the contempt for serious and thoughtful works of art that require some respect and effort to truly understand.

GARY H. REAMS

Los Angeles