To the editors.
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I’m sure a lot of people were upset when Duchamp put a mustache and goatee on a Mona Lisa reproduction, along with an inscription at the bottom that means “She has a hot ass.” But nobody stopped it. And did anybody suggest that Jasper Johns’ painting in abstract expressionist style, with a real broom mounted on it, should be slashed, say in front of de Kooning and Pollock because it was an insult to the seriousness of their style? Artists are always folding each other’s works into new works–Levine redoes Miro paintings and Walker Evans photographs. And what about all that silk screening by Warhol, Rauschenberg, and others? As far as I know there have been very few lawsuits where there are lots of opportunities. (In the only famous suit, Warhol settled with a lady who had done the original of the big flowers he appropriated.)
She also objects to her works being “trivialized.” There is but one way to keep your art from being trivialized, and that is to keep it to yourself. The world will do what it wants with your art and you have no control over that. Trying to control it can only be thought of as part of your art act.
