Unhappy over ‘wretched unhappiness’

DO the Los Angeles Times’ art critics customarily find meaning in art that reflects their opinion rather than anything evident in the work itself? (“He Holds a Mirror Up to a Weary World,” by David Pagel, June 15). In a review of Edouard Manet’s “Bar at the Folies-Bergere” at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Pagel writes that the barmaid at the center of the painting is “disenchanted” and that “boredom would be a relief from the despondency her expression makes palpable.”

That’s nonsense. There is no sign of any emotional state in that face except impassivity and certainly nothing that demonstrates “her wretched unhappiness.”

In the same issue, Christopher Knight is equally presumptuous in his reading of a photo in Karin Apollonia Muller’s exhibition at the Karyn Lovegrove Gallery. In “Broadway,” Knight finds that “an adjacent sunken freeway runs along the photograph’s bottom edge, transforming the conventional streetscape into a thin veneer covering up a tough, brutal and hollow core.” He is referring to a section of wall and street below a bridge, a passage that shows, to any objective viewer, concrete, light and shadow, and nothing more.

FRANZ SCHULZE

Lake Forest, Ill.

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YOUR review of the Manet exhibit at the Getty is simply insulting on so many levels -- to women, bar and restaurant workers, to painting in general. Offering neither art historical nor anecdotal evidence to back up an argument for the despondency he sees in the barmaid, your critic’s simplistic projection of a hamburger-flipper’s psyche onto her displays a profound lack of understanding of the painting’s context and, I’m certain, the artist’s intent.

The Folies-Bergere was the Studio 54 of the age and for anyone working there, that job must have been the bomb, a sought-after gig. And unlike in a Hollywood nightclub, pouring drinks in a Parisian hot spot wouldn’t be a temp job for aspiring actresses, rather a respected career (and it remains so across Europe). She’s calm and cool the way any bartender is to a first-time customer. But the painting is ingratiating to the viewer and this is why the image resonates over a century later.

HOWARD STIER

Los Angeles