Spare the visual arts
Sir: It must be difficult for many of your readers to put up with Paul Johnson on any subject at all, and it would be sad if there were many who could find him harmless good fun, particularly on painting. Even most of your numerous Giles Auty loyalists must have been offended by the tenor of the last Johnson diatribe that you released into the community (And another thing, 17 February). Cezanne becoming a pretext for Paul Johnson to start throwing his mal- odorous mud pies in a magazine designed for intelligent and relatively sane people is pretty outrageous.
To equate deep respect for Cezanne with craven gullibility, and with a convinced belief in the worth of Christo's 'Bricks', as well as all the pretensions that art com- merce feeds on (Johnson's 14 mentions of Trickles' is surely pathetic), is a poor kind of demagoguery. One need not share all Nicholas Serota's ideas or aspirations to have respect for him. Very few indeed of those who revere Cezanne would ever have voted for the sacking of Brian Sewell from the Evening Standard, but Johnson's picture of Mr Sewell as an almost sainted martyr surely cannot be either honest or justified. His generalisations are a most vexatious affront to the intelligence.
Would you countenance a columnist of yours writing in similar terms about James Joyce or Stravinsky? I don't believe that you would. So if you cannot bring yourself to dispense with Johnson's services entirely, I beg you to keep him away from the sub- ject of the visual arts, on which, quite apart from his malign barminess, he is not quali- fied to address anyone.
Bruce Bernard
44 Frederick Street, London WC1
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