Letters

LETTERS

Love us? Hate us? Have a response to an article we published? AGENDA wants to know what you think! Send letters by the 20th day of the month preceding publication of our next issue to: AGENDA, 220 S. Main St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Please include your address and phone number (for verification purposes). AGENDA reserves the right to edit or reject any letter. We give preference to letters under 400 words. 

Arts Issue Exchange 

Editor's Note: The July/August 1995 Arts Issue of AGENDA--and particularly the article by Arwulf Arwulf entitled: "Jacques Karamanoukian: Art Without a Profit Motive" has sparked the largest letter-writing campaign in AGENDA's history. In last month's issue we published a letter by local art gallery owner Alexa Lee, criticizing the arts issue and Arwulf's article. We received 14 letters in response, but due to space considerations we are only able to print six. The rest are on file at AGENDA for public perusal. 

Jacques Responds to Criticism 

Fact or fiction? 

     Mudwrestling is not my forte. I, therefore, will not lower my standards and enter the ring with Alexa Lee. 

     For those interested in facts and not fiction about my record, I invite them to give me a telephone call anytime. I'm listed in the telephone directory as--surprise--"Galerie Jacques" (white or yellow pages). We can, at that time speak honestly and in a civilized manner about my record and my accomplishments in the fields of art and education since 1967, the date of my arrival in Ann Arbor from Paris, France. 

     Again, I'd like to thank AGENDA for always trying to find out the truth about local and other issues,. 

Jacques Karamanoukian 

ANN ARBOR 

     I enjoyed Arwulf Arwulf's article, as I do his presence on the radio. Also a note to your copy editor: Jacques is spelled with a c. 

Susannah Copi

Associate Editor, Animation Magazine

AGOURA HILLS, CA

Karamanoukian's Vision is Pure 

     Alexa Lee's recent obfuscating and opportunistic remarks on Galerie Jacques have prompted me to reflect on my experiences with Karamanoukian over the past eight years. I find it disheartening to encounter the disdain with which his presence is still regarded. In such a commodity-blighted community as Ann Arbor is it surprising that Karamanoukian's vision, faulty only in its purity, has been subject to so much neglect and ignorance? 

     I know intimately this blackballing first hand, and empathize with this stark reality which besets only the finest, for my own art is famously infamous. But then, as Jacques and I both know, this is a basic ground rule in the struggle we have engaged. At this point I can merely look back and regard it as sad that a 26-year career of dedication has received so little acknowledgement and support from both the Ann Arbor and Detroit arts communities. Perhaps the intimidating prospect of thinking is regarded with such horror by these art pharisees that they will always bristle with hostility in the divine presence of Art...until it is safe, and dead. 

Roger Hayes