Letters: Apr. 18, 1969

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Love and Money." Witches never do spells for money unless a member of the craft is in definite financial need. Witches do not use psychedelic drugs ("along with pot and fascination"), and the "free colleges for dropouts" have the fat, rich and bored bourgeoisie for the largest part of their student body. My class was not "a how-to course in witchcraft"—there is no such thing, there never can be. There is no such program as "how to be a witch in ten easy lessons." Witchcraft is not folderol—it is the first religion known to man, a very ancient pagan religion antedating Christianity by thousands of years:

Because articles such as yours plant seeds of doubt, suspicion, and misunderstanding, witchcraft must remain hidden underground for years to come, just as it has been occulted for centuries.

DENNIS BOLLING (Antares Auriel) San Jose, Calif.

Walls as Canvases

Sir: I'd like to say a good word about the Helen Frankenthaler piece [March 28]. If all art criticism were written on that level of intelligence, readability and acuteness, we'd be a better-informed public. Too often the critics drown themselves and their ideas in a swirling sea of rhetoric intelligible to a favored few, sometimes only one.

But your review of the Frankenthaler show told us what it was abovjt without being patronizing. The author informed and entertained without being pedantic. Who could ask for anything more?

ALFRED PALCA Manhattan

Sir: I had put off repainting my living room for too long. But your inspiring ai-ticle made me realize that my living-room walls were not just walls but huge, hard canvases screaming for fulfillment.

Paint cans and sponges in hand, and careful to use my shoulder rather than my wrist, I attacked the first wall with Sherwin-Williams gloss, trying for a flatheaded confrontation. There was something monumentally upsetting in the result; it was a chaos of raw emotion. The militant playfulness marking the first attack gave way to a scarifying vitality, almost flamelike, leaping forth and savagely sideways marking the spot where my youngest son had rubbed his backside across the wet wall. I charged on to the next one, which allowed for the incorporation of empty space, i.e., the doorway leading to the kitchen. Trying for a work full of people, animals, flowers and so on that only the sophisticated could see, I used only canary yellow but with a human edge around the doorway as a playful counterpoint to the hard edge of the baseboard.

Proclaiming no new doctrines and founding no new schools, I hit the last wall four hours later and proceeded to create stately, bold, blaring, cherry, apricot, pale gold, mauve, maroon, crimson, orange, cinnamon, whistling blue sails of forms. No gimmicks or gadgetry here, thank you. Carefully avoiding dehumanization and de-sexualization (in the painterly tradition), I strove to leave out as many myriad forms and colors as was possible. When finished, the wall seemed to cry out: "My name is Pat O'Connor—and goddammit, I can paint as well as Helen Frankenthaler."

PATRICK T. O'CONNOR Chevy Chase, Md.