Art & the NYR

To the Editors:

While others applaud, as do I, the appearance and growth of The New York Review, permit me to commend your inspired use of Mr. David Levine’s fine allusive drawings—wry, sly, and remarkably atmospheric—in partnership with Grandville’s astonishing conceptions. (An editorial note on these “contributors” might be of general interest.)

A. E. Peters

Albion, Michigan

David Levine graduated from the Tyler School of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, in 1949, later studied with Hans Hofmann, and has since had many one-man shows in the media of oil, water-color, and charcoal. His paintings have been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries throughout the country, among them the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Corcoran Gallery.

J. J. Grandville was the name under which the French artist Jean Ignace Isadore Gérard (1803-1847) produced an enormous output of drawings, lithographs, and wood engravings. He was famous for his caricatures of political and social life and is today admired for the animals, insects, and flowers which he illustrated such works as Scènes de la Vie Privée et Publique des Animaux, La Fontaine’s Fables, Un Autre Monde, and Les Métamorphoses du Jour. He died in a lunatic asylum.