Healing L.A. Arts

Congratulations to Christopher Knight for his commentary “The Question Should Be: Can L.A. Help Heal the Arts?” (Jan. 27).

As an immigrant artist living and working in Los Angeles since 1981, I have grown used not only to the neglect the arts have always suffered but particularly to the realization that the dominant classes truly don’t want to acknowledge the crucial importance of our contribution to cultural life here.

Yet, little by little, artists of color, working artists, immigrant artists started appearing in the rosters of cultural programs and initiatives. But we got another layer of authoritarian directives, rather than a true partnership with an administrator.

Getting artists to follow institutional directives reduces them to bureaucrats performing a job, rather than truly creative individuals following their feelings and imaginative powers. It reduces artists to children, incapable of self-determination. It silences us. It forces us into painful compromises from which we’ll hardly be able to extricate ourselves.

MONICA GAZZO

Los Angeles

The current economic and social desperation has turned many politicians and community administrators into arts boosters. It’s true that some of the art they solicit can seem wan in face of the impossible social conditions it addresses. But few realistically expect art to achieve or present any kind of final solution. However, that’s no reason it should remain out of the social or cultural discourse.

A troubling insinuation in Knight’s article is that artists are making this art only because they are trying to stay afloat in these troubled economic waters. Artists have been engaged in art making with political and social agendas for ages, and the dogma that art must be useless and aesthetically pure went out with Modernism.

The criticism surrounding community-based social and political art must knowingly address its objectives, structure and audience to define its significance. This kind of art needs and deserves real critical attention by Knight, not a blanket condemnation.

SUVAN GEER

Santa Ana

It is high time for artists to retake control over the few resources available to us and time for us to reassert the inherent value of the arts.

DAVID PLETTNER

Loretta Livingston & Dancers

Los Angeles