The Future of Abstract Art. (Letters)

Beginning of article

To the Editors:

In "Does abstract art have a future?" (December 2002), Hilton Kramer speculates that it may not. He could be right. I am an abstract painter, however, and I would rather that he isn't.

Kramer points out that abstract painting has an "inevitably symbiotic relation to representational art" and that the larger question is "the fate of painting itself." He goes on to give examples of the complete absence of abstract painting in current high-level survey exhibitions.

His observations and conclusions are accurate. I maintain, however, that abstract and representational art are more than "symbiotically related"; at this point in art history, they are continuous. That is, we now understand that nothing is completely realistic and nothing is completely abstract, and the sharp distinction that was such a hot topic fifty years ago is now of little consequence. To …