Good for a Laugh

Thanks, Susan Kandel! Humor seems to have disappeared from newspapers lately, and your mock review of an obviously imaginary exhibition at a “Grimes Gallery” was a masterpiece of satire (“ ‘Night’: Pop Works Filtered Through a Gay Lens,” Nov. 11). You did telegraph your punch by saying that the “painterly incident is due to something as unaesthetic as grime,” but this made the rest more reachable.

You gave a beautiful imitation of a typically opaque comment by a pompous critic: “. . . Each is a conceptual trope, dictated by a unique, predetermined and minutely calibrated system.” That even looks like English.

And how about this: “In bringing the detritus of the post-industrial environment into the bright, white realm of pure visuality, (Peter) Hopkins adheres to the dialectical character of the work of Robert Smithson . . . .” What a beautiful parody of critical double talk, of meaningless polysyllables!

I love Kandel’s subtle insinuations about Hopkins’ “attempt to infect the gallery space with the carnal (!) excess that space habitually expresses” with “perfumed pieces.” I think that what she probably means is that Hopkins’ work stinks.

ISADORE M. RICHLIN

Culver City