Letters, May 15, 1995

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(5 of 5)

It is a telling fact that parents in Brentwood, California, can contribute $78,000 to the school's booster club for added staff, while the pta in the same school can raise only $5,000 because it is forced to turn over 20% of its profit to disadvantaged children in other areas of Los Angeles. The pta president noted that some parents objected to turning over funds to poorer schools downtown. Obviously, these parents couldn't care less about helping provide glasses for needy youngsters who can't see the print in a textbook and medical care for still others. It's too bad the parents of the Brentwood children aren't the only self-centered people in this world.

Shirley M. Nixon Reseda, California

DARK AGES OF ART?

Robert Hughes' review "Being a Nuisance," about Bruce Nauman's retrospective show, was nauseating [ART, April 24]. We have come to the Gotterdammerung of art, proved by Hughes' description of Nauman's work Black Balls: ". eight minutes of Nauman's fingers rubbing black pigment in close-up on his scrotum." We have evolved from the excellent sculpture of the Greeks and Romans to Renoir and other French painters-to this. Certainly the Dark Ages are upon us.

George L. Cochran Jacksonville, Florida

The Bruce Nauman exhibition was co-curated by Neal Benezra of the Hirshhorn Museum and Kathy Halbreich of the Walker Art Center. Although Nauman appears as his own subject in a number of his works, the clown in Clown Torture is not the artist, as Hughes wrote. Also, the sculpture From Hand to Mouth, a part of the Hirshhorn's collection, is not a cast of body parts of the artist but of his first wife. And finally, the parallel between that sculpture and Duchamp's With My Tongue in My Cheek is noted in Benezra's catalog essay, though not credited as such by Hughes.

James T. Demetrion, Director Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Washington