40
PARTISAN REVIEW
technique. A tradition in this sense teaches an opinion and the way to
realize it. As we are far from anything like this, it is only a question of
selecting separate qualities and means. They may well come from several
painters, of the past as well as of the present.
Art has been rendered multiple, especially since the Cezannian out–
break; tendencies of different character get along very well, progress,
live, and influence each other. I cannot assume for the young artist the
obligation to choose one in preference to any other. What lessons he can
take from the artists you name depend on the tendency he has himself
reached or adopted. Also, in any work of real depth very contradictory
directions can be recognized. The same painter of the present or the past
may offer very different possibilities to the student.
About art, it is dangerous to generalize any opinion or advice.
Besides, your lis·. ,)f names loses much by not including at least: The
Egyptians, Giotto, Mantegna, Fouquet, Ingres, Cezanne, Seurat, Leger,
Picasso, Brancusi, M, ndrian, Kandinsky, the Constructivists, the recent
Abstract painters ar
!
sculptors, and the Surrealists.
In such a con,pleted list, I give personally more importance to
Poussin because I see in his work qualities that I miss in mine; but there
is something to learn from all the men you named, all those I added, and
of course many others.
I incline towards a form of modern painting that makes possible
the use of the qualities of the ancient painters together with the most
recent discoveries.
I see no definitive contradictions between them. It is the function of
Art to associate contraries and solve them.
Our constant preoccupation must be to enlarge the scopes of Art, not
to reduce it, not to confine it to a single aspect, a single case, a pattern.
Rockbridge Baths, Vi1 ginia,
March,
1938.
jEAN HEUON
