Dear Editor:

How to respond calmly to Bob
Hunter’s column that appeared in
your newspaper on Feb. 22 of this
year? His gratuitous, sarcastic and
derisive condemnation of what he
referred to as ‘the modern stuff”
he saw during a recent visit to
Canada’s new National Art
Gallery in Ottawa with his 10-
year-old sor revealed not only an
unfortunate, though forgivable ig-
norance about contemporary art,
but also, and what I found to be
much less forgivable, an inability
or unwillingness to open his eyes
and mind to that which is new,
different and \v.hich fails to con-
form to his obviously preconceived
opinions as to who are, to use his
own words, ‘‘good’’? modern ar-
tists.

Small wonder that he found the
wildlife paintings of Robert
Bateman to be so appealing, since
they are largely devoid of intellec-
tual demands on the viewer, con-

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7 — Wednesday, April 12, 1989 - North Shore News

MAILBOX

Hunter passes on
modern art prejudice

sisting as they do of comfortable
illusions which are more akin to
scientific illustrations that meticu-
lously re-state the obvious than
they are to thought-provoking cre-
ative gestures,

Ironically, when Hunter ex-
pressed pleasure at Canada’s own-
ership of works by Renoir, Van
Gogh, Monet and Turner, he iden-
tified painters whose works were
reviled and derided when they were
presented for public viewing.

Sufficient to say that as any stu-
dent of art history knows, in-
novative art that fails to appeal to
the lowest common denominator
of public taste is usually regarded
by the Bob Hunters of the world as
being incompetent.

How refreshing it would have
been if Hunter had encouraged his
son to approach Canada’s “‘artistic
scumbags”’ with an open mind, in-
stead of using him as a sounding-
board for his own adult prejudices.
Ted Kingan, North Vancouver

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