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Letters to the EditorNovember 8, 2006 ‘Nothing Left To Hide' 
In a recent review of exhibitions featuring the nude figure [Arts & Letters, "Nothing Left To Hide," October 12, 2006], Maureen Mullarkey writes that "the nude exposes both its creator and the culture of its time." A critic's response to the nude, I would add, exposes the critic. Most of Ms. Mullarkey's remarks regarding painter Jacob Collins's Classical Realist nudes at Hirschl & Adler Modern are petty and sarcastic. She writes that two of the paintings are "McNudes for the carriage trade … fastidious erotica to go with the Jado bidet and high thread-count linens from Yves Delorme"; that "good living and good nipples are the classic combo" in another work; and so on. Further, Ms. Mullarkey refers to Mr. Collins as "an enthusiastic evangelist for a secular revival that preaches the gospel of traditional art practices [known] as Classical Realism" — which, she asserts, "contains neither classicism nor realism as Courbet understood it." In this respect, she is woefully misinformed. The term "Classical Realism" was coined in 1982 by the elder statesman of the movement, Richard Lack — who founded the pioneering Atelier Lack in 1969. As Stephen Gjertson, an early student there, has written, Classical Realism was conceived as "a broad artistic point of view characterized by a love for the visible world and the great traditions of Western art, including classicism, realism and impressionism … It is classical because it exhibits a preference for order, beauty, harmony and completeness; it is realist because its basic vocabulary comes from the representation of nature." Finally, there is Ms. Mullarkey's snide claim that Classical Realism is "as much a marketing phenomenon as Thomas Kinkade's Paintings of Light." She evidently does not distinguish between art and pseudo-art. She also falsely implies that Classical Realists have seen such dollars as generated by the Kinkade factory. Some I know, in fact, eke out a meager existence, while striving to create meaningful work. LOUIS TORRES
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