Scott Wyman The Sun-Sentinel & the Miami Herald

August 28, 2009

Scott Wyman
The Sun-Sentinel & the Miami Herald
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: I don’t know anything about art but I know what I like – Some comments on your story on publicly funded art in both the Sun-Sentinel and the Miami Herald this day.

Mr. Wyman,

Assuming that the rules of “de gustibus” still apply we can never answer the question “What is Art?”

I know that I know the difference between Corelli, Chiaroscuro, and Caravaggio. Knowing that the question of county mandated, tax payer paid art – Could we call it a “public option”? – it becomes a question of not “good”, not “bad”, but rather “why”.

At some point in the selection process a faceless bureaucrat, someone who began his business career in the Post Office, someone who mixes plaids and stripes, will chooses between an updated version of “The Winged Victory of Samothrace” and a fresh interpretation of “Nude Descending a Staircase”. Incidentally, this apparatchik has a future as the assistant deputy vice Czar of the soon to be installed Death Panels. Why doesn’t the County commission a mural about them based on “Guernica”?

Speaking of art being shown at public buildings how about an exhibit of the cartoons caricaturing the prophet Mohammed, blessed be his name? I don’t much care if the towel headed louts burn down the only bathroom in Kafiristan in the name of religious freedom. It will be their loss, not ours.

Perhaps Broward County could sponsor some seminars on Dante’s La Commedia. For 8 centuries the art reflecting his poem has stirred passionate feelings. Isn’t art supposed to provoke?

If we allow the selection of art on and for public buildings to be ruled by quotidian politics don’t we run the risk of starting on an irreversible slide down the “slippery slope” leading to the horrors of landing in the terrible world of “chilling effects”?

Hitler and Stalin were big believers in public art. Their legacy is exactly what?

Meanwhile, property values are falling, taxes are rising, and supposedly rational adults are talking about 2% of a building contract being given over to art?

“I’ll retire to Bedlam.”


Kevin Smith


PS – Did you know that Jackson Pollack studied under Thomas Hart Benton? The teacher said that while the student had a good sense of color he had no sense of form.