Transcendent art?

Donald Kuspit complains that postmodern art “blurs the boundaries between art and life, to the detriment of the aesthetic” [“Back to the Drawing Board,” March 6], then cites Coleridge that “the artist is about ... finding the moment of transcendence in the everyday, the moment of the lyrical in what looks banal.” Wouldn’t the very postmodern art that Kuspit decries fit this description?

If the role of the artist is to find moments of transcendence in the everyday, how might Kuspit explain his choice for his exhibit of an almost pornographically depicted image of a naked woman standing in a barn leaning suggestively on the back of a donkey? I can’t imagine that one would run across that image any day, let alone every day. And banal? If I had a barn and I found that woman and that donkey, I would hardly consider that banal.

Richard Flory

Newport Beach

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At last.

We have suffered for 45 years the fallout from postmodernism.

A culture locked in adolescence? Who knows? All I know is that most of our country’s art institutions gladly played along with all of their money and resources.

Several more essays can and will be written about the “why” of this issue. In the end, all we have to live with are the results -- results which have led to an insane art world that actually closed its doors for 45 years to artists who displayed any mastery of the hand; the madness of an art world separated from the artist where the artists’ statement is elevated beyond their actual work of art.

Kuspit’s book is only the tip of the iceberg, but thank God it is here, not a moment too soon.

Virginia Hoge

Pasadena