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PARTISAN REVIEW
3.
The final phase of picture-building starts with the transmis–
sion of the structure on to the canvas. The diagrams have naturally
been unable to indicate any stages of color-development; the tints
are usually approximated in water-color as the shapes become
finally established, although they also begin to be felt before they
make their actual appearance. Color-expression has a relation to
the artist's unconscious somewhat analogous to that of the shapes.
Picasso has recounted that after a day in the forest of Fontaine–
bleau he would paint a green picture to get the "greenness" out of
his system. Well-known are the violent intensifications of color
that have permeated the works of most painters from Gauguin to
Roux who have visited the tropics. In my own paintings I have
noticed color-variations between work that I do in summer and
winter; the physical effects of seasonal changes are noticeable.
One year I executed a gouache-series in Rome, and with no pre–
conceived intention the dominant colors tended toward heavy pur–
ples and wine-reds, although the shapes with which I was experi–
menting were forms from American Indian parchments that
demanded a quite different scheme. I have at no other time shown
any allegiance to the Italian baroque color-scale.
The time has now come to execute the three projected paint–
ings. The solution at which I have arrived on the scratch-paper is
copied (usually in charcoal) as the actual foundation for the
painting1 This I render as loosely as possible (actual tracing I
find a restriction) because alterations become inevitable when a
composition is seen for the first time tremendously enlarged, no
matter how much the enlargement was prepared for in advance.
From here on the steps become difficult to discuss, as color and
tone-values bring one continually closer to the artist's personality.*
The more highly developed a work of art, the more exacting be–
come the demands on taste. A double task is now confronted. On
the one hand the various color-approximations must be "keyed"
*The relation of "quality" to form and structure may be easily misconstrued from
an article such as this. A work of art may of course answer the requirements that I
am emphasizing of construction and taste and still be comparatively negligible in its
expressive range, as the structural fabri c projects something of the artist which is
beyond the scope of analysis. Similarly, one cannot determine beyond a certain point
just why a fine vintage-wine is
better
than an inferior beverage; yet although there
may be many who prefer coca-cola, somehow or other a rare Burgundy seems to retain
its distinguished quality.
