Artistic Legacy

Charles Berliner (Letters, May 13) says the Robert Mapplethorpes of this era “will survive into the future. Well, I would like to quote a great artist and crusader against censorship:

“Formerly, people feared lest among the works of art there might chance to be some causing corruption, and they prohibited art altogether. Now, they only fear lest they should be deprived of any enjoyment art can afford, and patronize any art. And I think the last error is much grosser than the first, and that its consequences are far more harmful.”

This was Leo Tolstoy in “What Is Art” (1899). If we listen to Tolstoy’s advice, then Mr. Berliner’s predictions are very ominous.

TIM SOLLIDAY

Pasadena

The late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe has been at the center of a dispute on public funding of art. Some have denounced his work as pornographic.