40
PARTISAN REVIEW
housewives; they believe correctly that they have found a celebrated
modern painter who has joined their ranks at last.
To Peter Blume, Julien Levy Gallery (one picture exhibition) :
I have not seen the
Eternal City,
and that is not entirely necessary.
I can see it all from where I sit with the aid of a colored photograph. I
know your work of old, and its expressive scope was never hard to fathom.
This time your subject-matter, your properties, have changed with your
sojourn abroad. What is most important you now talk a language that
the critics can understand and write about; therefore your picture has
received astonishingly favorable publicity, from the
New Yorker
("swell")
to the
Nation
("the outstanding painting of the year.") Perhaps you
have noticed that the praise has come from directions that are a trifle
shaky on aesthetic grounds; and there are obvious reasons why the
Against War and Fascism
members could hardly have passed you by
without applause. You have made other new gestures that attracted
praise; you have depicted ruins, columns, foliage, clouds, and a suspicion
of Christ in the background, all of which the public is accustomed to
regard as the natural properties of art. And there is a satirical overtone
that no one can miss. Furthermore, you have worked slowly and care-
fully on a smooth gesso panel, which turns neatness into child's-play.
You never slip a brush-stroke across a boundary on to the adjacent
object; and thus you have brought down cries of technical perfection.
Dali is another who has been lauded as a consummate technician.
It might be rewarding to qualify a little the meaning of the word tech-
nique. True, neither of you is sloppy and does not spill over the edges
(your works might live more freely if you occasionally would). But what
of the more searching aspects of technical dexterity, that can bring life
through the very impact of the artist's touch? And if you paint in chiaro-
scuro there should be, it seems, a technical equipment capable of pattern-
ing and controlling the areas of light and dark. The plastic language
requires a broader definition of 'technique' for sustenance than the mere
ability to follow boundary-lines on a smooth gesso-panel.
Behind your painting there lurks a deeper irony than the green face
of Mussolini on a jumping-jack. You have lived in Italy, and you have
appreciated the gruesomeness of fascist dictatorship. Yet your painting
falls completely into the mesh it excoriates. Fascism delights in the pic-
torial conceptions that do no violence to what has always been. Fascism
fears the genuine contemporary spirit, it will serve up what has always
been served. It will give the people an art that resembles superficially
such art as has been safely tucked into the museums. Here you have
given us a picture that "looks like" the Quattrocento; Hitler might give
you a fat prize at the Munich
Kunstpalast
if you would only substitute
