To the Editors:
In an omnibus article, “Half a Dozen Contemporaries” (February 1990), Jed Perl includes a review of Stanley Lewis’s recent show at the Bowery Gallery that compels a response.

“Exhibiting before a public that’s familiar with the strengths of one’s earlier work,” Jed writes, “an artist can be liberated to take risks.” But this artist can also “slough off, confident that the good old audience will give the nod to anything he does.” Stanley is “running on empty—and asking people to come along for the ride anyway.” He “still has his gift for surfaces,” but the Bowery show was “hollow all the way through.”

I am reminded of an allegation that used to be made against Picasso: the artist is a manipulator and scamp who passes off inferior work on an audience he deems susceptible. But what painter, under what conditions, would proceed from such a cynical motive? Jed offers no rationale other than his own imagining, no evidence other than his own reading of the works in Stanley’s show. To anyone who knows Stanley and his work, as I do, the allegation is preposterous. It is also, of course, extremely insulting.

Note that the allegation is not made directly: Artists in general can “slough off”; Stanley in particular is “running on empty.” Arguing by insinuation is, I am sorry to say, all too typical of this review.

Stanley is said to be part of the “serious crowd,” made up of people who “go