Art Exploitings

So Gary Reams thinks that he is so much above the rest of us that he alone has the right to decide what can be done to art reproductions (Calendar Letters, July 3).

Has this man completely blocked out the Dada period? If it is unspeakable and “trivializing” for an advertiser to play on a well-known piece of art, then why was it incredible when Marcel Duchamp suggested using Da Vinci’s art as an ironing board?

Or when he created a ready-made simply by drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa”? If, it is a heinous crime to use artwork in advertising, why is it remarkable when advertising is used in art?

I realize that there are differences between the two media, but if it is all right to trivialize art for the sake of art, then there is nothing wrong with making art more accessible to the “philistine” types for the sake of advertising.

Art taps human emotions common to us all. It is elitists like Reams who ruin the true human aspect of art. If it were not for the numerous reproductions of Da Vinci’s, Seurats, Michelangelos and others many children today would not recognize these masters.

In all the ways that Reams might think that he is above the “blue-collar-beer life style,” he is a human being just like the rest of us. He may think it barbaric to use Suerat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” in the manner that the Calendar did on its June 19 cover, but his elitist attitude is much more so.

LIISA A. DELMAN

West Hills