ON GREENBERG AND CRITICS
distinction and sensibility in a fragment. Perhaps the anonymous master–
craftsmen will be found again who once produced temples and cathe–
drals; strangely enough they are often considered the greatest of all
in the end.
George L. K. Morris
REPLY
As far as I can tell, Mr. Morris' main complaint is about my
taste, and all the rest is
his
taste, about which I myself complain in
turn.
If
I saw eye to eye with Mr. Morris, I do not think he would
mind so much that I hand out marks to the class instead of writing
appreciative blurbs as they do in France (does he really want that kind
of kibitzing?). In arguing differences of taste it is almost impossible to
say more than
tu
quoque,
and I am given scant opportunity for even
that, since Mr. Morris does not mention any of the American artists
he-I assume-feels I neglected in my
Horizon
piece, and I am insuffi–
ciently acquainted with the Paris painters he lists (though on the basis
of the little I have seen of Hartung, Domela, Magnelli, and Lapicque,
I would hazard that most of his swans are rather feeble geese).
Nevertheless, Mr. Morris' attack is serious, well written, and sincere,
and I must do him the courtesy of answering him, especially since his
lecture on the differences between Cubism and abstract art embodies
a fallacy that may mislead the unwary.
Matisse passed "out of the tournament in love sets around 1917."
I feel that anyone with a real "instinct for pictorial structure" would
have been unable to write that. This is what happens when literal a
priori dogmas about the historically necessary are consulted instead of
the pleasure and exaltation to be experienced from painting. Historical
necessity does operate, but not with the consistency here expected of it.
Matisse's "Woman before an Aquarium" of 1924 and "Lemons on a
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