Bathsheba's bath - Letters

To the Editors:

One comment in Sue Taylor's review of R.H. Ives Gammell's work [A.i.A., Feb. '02] is very insulting to women who go to a mikvah. She writes about the artist's 1931 painting of a naked Bathsheba who "resembles a movie-star pinup as much as a Jewess at her mikvah." Taylor should know that mikvahs are used for ritual cleansing and purification and that modesty is the norm for Orthodox women. Mikvahs are definitely not places in which to flaunt one's body.

Matthew Baigell
New York

Sue Taylor replies:

I'm sorry that Matthew Baigell misinterpreted my remarks on Gammell's painting. My point was precisely that the titillating exhibitionism of the figure's pose is at odds with the subject matter of the mikvah.

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