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PARTISAN REVIEW
For an American alert to the sources of his culture, our relation
to Europe is always an ambiguous affair, full of promises and possibil–
ities which at the same time dissolve into inhibitions and restraints.
Among our artists it is not a problem which effects only the derivative
and the second-rate, but one which weighs heavily (consciously or not
-it is a matter of the times) on the best of them. Consider as fine a
painter as John Marin. All his life, I suppose, he has had to put up
with the European "competition," and although it is clear he has
learned much from it, one feels his paintings have been intimidated
by it. He found his own authentic voice; but the result has been a re–
iteration, rather than a development, and therefore a certain shrinkage
where one anticipated complexity and growth. Marin's paintings now
have for all of us an unmistakable signature; but- this is the point–
to what extent is that signature the result of an inhibition forced upon
him by his situation? In his latest exhibition, for example, are there
any works which tell us anything which the artist has not said again
and again in all the years of his maturity? Is there a single work which
surprises us? Is there a new mode of feeling in one of them?
For this writer, the hero of modern American art is Marsden
Hartley. He was less sure of himself than Marin; and his signature
is by no means so unmistakable. But in place of certainty he had an
innocence which made it possible for him to go unintimidated. This
might sound like a curious interpretation of a painter whose eclecticism
is obvious. But it was precisely Hartley's willingness to immerse him–
self in the great styles of his time, and his indifference to the "unique"
signature (which has so often seduced American painters into believing
themselves original) which makes him one of the sturdiest figures
in
American art. Inevitably the results were uneven; his "Berlin" paint–
ings are not quite his own; but some of his "Fauve" and "Cubist"
paintings are admirable; and now and then, as in his portrait of Ryder
or in "Evening Storm, Schoonick, Maine," which now hangs in the
Museum of Modern Art, his talent raised itself to a distinct master–
piece.
I have cited Marin and Hartley here because, first, I see no reason
to share Mr. Rosenberg's curious reticence about naming particular
painters; and second, it is my impression that the painters he discusses
show all the indications (as a group) of undergoing Marin's fate,
rather than Hartley's. Moreover, the entire flavor of Mr. Rosenberg's
account of the new American painters is such that the presence of con–
crete figures and an awareness of antecedents will help to determine
where his critical insight evaporates into apology and where his apology
