Artist Disputes Critic

Regarding the review of my work at Hunsaker/Schlesinger by Susan Kandel (Art Reviews, Calendar, Oct. 19): Kandel seems to be misinformed about the influences bearing on my work. While I cannot disconnect myself entirely from the aesthetic surroundings of my time, I am seldom influenced by my contemporaries, especially those in the California school. I have drawn consistently for the past 23 years from 17th-Century Flemish art, the Italian Renaissance, Italian panel painting, 20th-Century formalism (particularly the Bauhaus geometric kind), the individual aesthetics of Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Daumier, Morandi, Morris Graves and a personal visual vocabulary inspired by 2 1/2 decades of employment as a scenic artist.

Ms. Kandel, apparently ignorant of the work I have done in the past, fails to recognize images and visual vocabulary I have used in continuing transformation since 1972, long before I knew the work of the artists she claims I’ve borrowed from.

RICHARD SEDIVY

Artist

Los Angeles