Women Artists and Reviews

Regarding “Frankenthaler Retrospective Raises Questions,” Feb. 9:.

Christopher Knight seems unable to review the exhibitions of internationally known women artists with any seriousness. When he reviewed the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit last year, in the Herald Examiner, he called her “perhaps the most overrated American artist of the 20th Century” and attributed what he called her “gassily inflated reputation” to sexist tokenism.

Helen Frankenthaler fared no better in his review in The Times. Knight questions why she was given the show at all and characterizes her entire ouevre as “a minor blip.” Then, reusing the put-down he apparently reserves for world-class women artists, he calls her work “gassy and bloated.”

Readers--and artists too--deserve intelligent and serious art criticism, not superficial sarcasm.

JUDITH MARGOLIS, Los Angeles