THE REVIEWS THAT CAUSED THE RUMPUS AND...

THE REVIEWS THAT CAUSED THE RUMPUS AND OTHER PIECES by Brian Sewell (Bloomsbury/Trafalgar Square: $24.95; 224 pp., illustrated, paperback original). The articulate critic for the Evening Standard provoked a furor in London with his rejection of PC standards and his insistence on excellence as the only legitimate standard in art: “No painter should be judged by anything other than achievement--it is irrelevant that Michelangelo had a taste for boys and Titian for girls, that of the Artemisia Gentileschi was a woman and Orazio a man, that a painter’s face is black or pink or yellow. The only thing that matters is that if a painter puts a brush to canvas, there should be some quality of imagination and skill in the finished picture that redeems it from mere daubing.” In these collected reviews, Sewell seems to miss the point of the work of Richard Diebenkorn and a few other American artists, but his outspoken commentaries offer stimulating reading.