Call a spot a spot

RICHARD TUTTLE’S exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art demonstrates my belief that the less there is to see, the more there is to write about [“Whispered, Not Shouted,” April 28]. Critic Christopher Knight wrote a longish paragraph, for instance, about “a 3-inch piece of white clothesline, nailed to a white gallery wall,” comparing it to “Martin Luther’s 95 theses nailed on the door of the castle church ... “ etc., etc.

Did he and I see the same exhibit? I saw a drawing consisting of a single small spot of ink on a framed piece of paper. He saw work that the headline summarized as “Subtle. Elegant. Spiritual,” requiring reams of explication and giving a new, presumably unintended meaning to the old saying that “one picture is worth a thousand words.”

While Knight writes that the artist’s “perennial subject is the condition of mortality in which life is lived” and evokes “the power of a refreshing breeze,” he also notes that many of his works “tremble on the brink of pure invisibility.” Maybe they were trembling more than usual the day I went. This would explain why I saw so much emptiness and so little art.

CLIFF MCREYNOLDS

La Jolla