Burlington Arcadia
Sir: I agree with Paul Johnson (The press, 25 June) that 'routine coverage of painting arouses little interest'. (The same could, however, be said of routine coverage of anything else). But, by his own account, Mr Johnson prefers PR pap to any other form of art-reading. So we cannot be surprised if he is way off course in his assessment of more serious periodicals.
It is true, for instance, that the Burling- ton Magazine for May 1988 contained no colour pages. But this is not because the magazine has yet to be dragged into modern times. It is because, unlike some other art publications, it does not make routine use of colour the way some res- taurants make routine use of chain-store sauce Béarnaise. It uses colour when it is needed, and not otherwise.
During the six other months of this year to date, it has had by my count a total of 42 colour pages. These were devoted primari- ly to major works of art as to which colour reproduction had something new and valid to say. These ranged from the Caravaggio `Card Sharps', recently acquired by the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, to the late painting by Andre Derain called 'The Artist at Home' that had just been ac- quired by the Tate. In the current (July) issue of the Burling- ton, the Getty Museum's 'Annunciation' by Dieric Bouts is the subject of no fewer than 17 colour illustrations. The object of these is not to provide a seductive garnish to pages that would otherwise be quickly turned. Like the magazine itself, they are there to serve scholarship. Thanks to them, the tatterdemalion campaign to discredit the Getty Bouts looks even more ridicu-
LETTERS
lous than it did before.
As I have been reading the Burlington since the summer of 1937, and have seen a great many other art magazines come and go that same period, perhaps I may add that there is really no point of true com- parison between the Burlington and most of the others.
John Russell
New York Times, New York
Previous page
