Andrew's World

Sir: Your long service to American art is highlighted by the distinguished cover and great article on Andrew Wyeth.

NORMAN KENT

Editor

American Artist New York City

Sir: It was a superb job. But can't art critics be less serious? I cannot help believing that Wyeth (and others) produce some of their best work "just for the hell of it."

R. S. RADCLIFFE

Ardmore, Pa.

Sir: Instead of delighting in life, as did Grandma Moses, Andrew Wyeth seems to revel in a dolorous view. His work depicts death, decay, hopelessness and despair. Is this "what America is like"?

RICHARD M. SMALL

Rochester

Sir: TIME recognized in Wyeth the fact that art is more than cleverness in balancing shapes in space and more than the personal image of a borderline psychopath, however picturesque his disturbance.

Any vital culture in the arts must be based on communication to the human community, not on incommunicable personal statements, completely provincial to the moment and person of the expressor.

A great person is one who contains a wide segment of humanity and more than his moment in time. Wyeth is such a person.

EDGAR MILLER

Chicago

Sir: I just read your cover story on Andrew Wyeth. Congratulations! I respect him as the finest fine artist.

DONG KINGMAN

New York City

Ethnic for Vice President

Sir: Pity the plight of the poor Democratic Party! It must find an able, liberal Northerner who is also a Roman Catholic to run for Vice President next fall. We were submitted to all sorts of charges of bigotry before and charity after the last election because a Roman Catholic finally won the presidency. Was that WHY he was elected? I was suspicious at the time that Roman Catholics were persuaded to vote for him for religious reasons and non-Romans were threatened with charges of bigotry if they did not--but he became a truly American President.

If ethnic, religious or color conditions are to be imposed, it would seem that the Negroes might well demand that the candidate be one of them. That great ethnic group, the Jews, who have seen longer and worse persecution than the Negroes, have an equal claim to consideration--if such consideration is to be given any particular group.

(THE REV.) HARVEY P. KNUDSEN

St. Paul's Parish (Episcopal)

Philipsburg, Pa.

Meat of the Matter Sir: Investigations into the story of meat reputedly being shipped to Australia from South America and thence to West Germany [Dec. 6] show that this in fact did not happen. The meat came directly from South America, accompanied by forged and falsified documents that made it appear to have come from Australia. In the interests of the Australian meat trade with the United States, I am very anxious to have this matter corrected.

H. C. MENZIES*

Australian Government

Senior Trade Commissioner

New York City

To a Degree

Sir: I suggest that any man who has had the drive, guts, patience and intelligence (and a hard-enough-working wife) to get a Ph.D. in anything has developed his "imaginative and reasoning powers apart from marketable skill" [Dec. 20]. The liberal arts tradition is dying because of its sterility--natural death, not murder.

The Ph.D. in any marketable field, and several which are not, such as anthropology, has the chance of making a real and needed contribution to his society. The liberal arts graduate may make such a contribution, but it is aside from, not a product of, his education.

MRS. W. W. PILCHER

Urbana, Ill.

Sir: It was a pleasant surprise to find myself and some of my classmates in the photograph in the Education section. Your caption under the picture was more surprising: "New Ph.D.s at Columbia University Commencement."

We were new M.D.s in the graduating medical class of 1961. Are we young physicians (most of us are still in training as residents at various hospitals scattered over the country) suddenly transformed into a part of this urgently needed pool of "technical scholars" for Du Pont, General Electric, and aerospace or did TIME goof?

CHULL S. SONG, M.D.

New York City

> Goof --ED.

Traditional Tactics

Sir: When you mentioned Lechin's remark, "It is a tradition in the mines" [Dec. 20], you reminded me of the following:

Working for the Compania Minera de Oruro in the tin-mining camp of Colquiri, one early morning in 1948, tin miners led by Juan Lechin invaded our homes and took us to union headquarters with shouts of "Que mueren los gringos!"

The miners tried to get an increase in salaries, and 16 Americans and four Europeans were held as hostages. The government threatened to send troops but was talked out of it for fear of our lives. After radio conversation with our La Paz office, a raise was negotiated about 7 p.m., and we were released.

As you can see, Juan Lechin, now Vice President, used these tactics a long time ago; and having armed tin miners on his side is a grave threat to the Bolivian government, which has tried hard to run the mines economically.

GUSTAVE SEITZ

Cleveland Heights, Ohio

The Gospel & the Broom

Sir: In your story about Christmas "debunking" [Dec. 20], the author of the book Born in Bethlehem says: "When Christmas is stripped of fable . . ." That "when" interests me.

Once upon a time, as I recall, there was a person who took a broom to the seashore to sweep back the tides. Imagining the hundreds of millions of persons who are filled with traditional Christmas spirit and thoughts, we think of Author Smit as a man with a broom.

PERRY O. HANSON

Iola, Kans.

Sir: Fie on the popular demythologizers of the infancy gospel! Which is more truly bread, the insipid white loaf one buys in the supermarket or the eucharist? Patently the eucharist, as the Lord expressly states in the sixth chapter of John's gospel. Which is more truly history, the narration of Luke and Matthew (transeat its literary form), or the eviscerated version lucubrated by the gnosis of the demythologizers? Evidently the former. If the hermeneutical scalpel is to be wielded in public, one must use great care lest he convey to the little ones that Scrooge was correct when he said of the Christmas tale, "Bah, humbug!"

(THE REV.) JOHN M. EGAN

Salve Regina College

Newport, R. I.

* Mr. Menzies is a cousin of Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

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