Genteel patrons

I loved Lynell George’s piece on Kara Walker at the Hammer [“Artworks That Cut Deeply,” March 9]. However; it seemed to me that she implied that wild-eyed fury and violent rage is the universal response to the work.

I really don’t think the kind of people who go to the Hammer will have the response George predicts. The strata of upper-class bourgeois whites who live in Brentwood/Bel-Air/Westwood and support the Hammer manifest their latent racist values in much subtler, unseen ways. They’re educated.

Art consultants, collectors and others of the dedicated art-viewing public are probably the bulk of the crowds that you will find shuffling through, and they are more likely strategizing about a purchase of the work and therefore highly unlikely to want it damaged.

The interesting thing about Walker’s work is how the silhouette technique of presenting images seduces the viewer’s social, public, self-conscious mind and penetrates behind it to deeper layers of cognition and psychology. The several possible narratives suggested by any of her works tease out a template deep within a viewers’ values about race and racism.

The work doesn’t need controversy to be meaningful. Walker is just a talented person, and her work is beautiful and provokes thought and introspection. She doesn’t need self-importance or grandiosity to be an interesting artist.

Christopher Josh Giese

Los Angeles