Madam, - Having just completed a three-year appointment as chaplain in St George's Church,Venice, it was delightful and refreshing to read Kevin Myers's rant on the subject of modern art in general, and the contents of the Venice Guggenheim Gallery in particular (An Irishman's Diary, September 2nd).
The "daubs, smears, paint trails, doodles, random shapes," not to mention the occasional gold-painted lavatory seat hailed as "domestic post modernism", are indeed, by any sane standard, rubbish. However they pale into insignificance in comparison with the sheer bilge talked by the poseurs and artistic snobs who in the past actually enthused about one exhibit that had been hung upside-down.
These are the people who will spend valuable hours on a short visit to that sublimely beautiful city, while admitting that they actually didn't get round to seeing the unique collection, including three Bellini Madonnas and the Veronese Last Supper in the Accademia, or the three Tintorettos in the Chiesa San Trovaso, both within five minutes' walk of the Guggenheim.
Raymond Learsy (September 5th), rather than Kevin Myers, is the one who "gets it all wrong" in apparently attributing some kind of humanitarianism or philanthropy to Peggy's "picture-a-day" spree in the Paris of the 1940s. Yes, she was in many cases the last-resort buyer who enabled individuals to escape the evils of Nazism; and, yes, perhaps her gallery in New York did act as a lifeline for some during the troubled times. However, she was not known to be willing to return any of her wartime acquisitions at their purchase price after the outbreak of peace, when the artists were still impoverished, though no longer in mortal danger, or when they had achieved some kind of fame or notoriety which added value to their daubs. Philanthropy was, like a good many other things, not one of Peggy's virtues.
On the subject of modern art in Venice, you might be interested to know that one of the exhibits in this year's Biennale, in the central courtyard of the main Post Office, was a series of booths showing videos of such an edifying subject as a man peeing on another man. It was dismantled on the instructions of the carabinieri on the grounds of lewdness. So much for art uplifting the soul! - Yours, etc.,
JOHN McKAY, Chiesa San Giorgio, Venice, Italy.
Madam, - With the restraint and elegant under-writing for which he is noted, your respected columnist Kevin Myers described the great 20th-century patroness of the arts, Peggy Guggenheim, as "silly", a "modernists' groupie," a "pampered, self-indulgent fool" and an "over-rich imbecile".
He wrote of her "meaningless assembly of tat", and her "collection of junk", the references being to the works of some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, whom she tirelessly promoted.
Oddly, he seems to feel that art should have come to a halt because a barbarian like Hitler was on the rampage. Some might feel that the cry of creativity was needed even more desperately at that dark time.
Guggenheim in London in the 1920s showed her perception by exhibiting the work of then unknown artists such as Jean Cocteau, Braque, Miró and Picasso. Mr Myers seems to bracket all 20th-century artists as abstract painters ("tempted by the poisoned apples of lazy abstraction", in his glittering phrase), including Chagall (unequivocally a figurative painter) and Dali (a surrealist). More evidence of Mr Myers's insouciant and far from abstract imagination. - Yours etc.,
RONAN FARREN, Avondale Road, Killiney, Co Dublin.