Liberal Art

First, I would like to thank William Wilson for his comments on my painting (“The Shock of the Old,” March 27).

There was, however, an unclear aside made that work such as mine which reaches back to an earlier tradition is “conservative.” A sub-headline dubbed it “Reaganart,” a term I find very offensive.

It is my deep feeling that any art that seeks to define humanist and ethical ideals and that requires both the artist and the viewer to have a certain level of knowledge and skill is a profoundly liberal product.

It assumes a heroic potential for the common person and offers to fulfill that potential by an extreme attention to education, most particularly the humanities. Our art must proclaim itself with Tolstoian depths of didactic and moral investigations.

Against such efforts, head-in-the-sand fundamentalists and People magazine Presidents will pale.

DAVID LIGARE

Salinas