met in pre-Paris newspaper days, a friendship continued in Paris.
"What did you want to bring me here for when we could have achieved more stimulation at Bleeck's. This stuff is like those chromos on butcher and grocer calendars we used to get at Christmas."
"Bleeck's old-fashioneds are no excuse to make a flip crack. Don't dismiss in one minute what it took five years of hard work to paint. At least he hasn't stuck newspaper, bits of wood, a few pants' buttons, on a board and offered it as painting—or art criticism, for that matter."
Genlis grinned. "Pants' criticism—buttoned or unbuttoned?"
"You could unbutton a little to see he's painting his version of the U.S. He has a theory about painting America as an American." "He must have put his paint through a wringer so there'd be no juice left. Makes me thirsty."
"Look—this man is an able painter. Technically, he's the best of the younger men here about. He's riding a theory now, I'll admit, but he's capable, with a sense of design. That's a basis for development."
"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. I grant his technical accomplishment. I'm surprised though to hear you extol technique as an end. You actually like these paintings?"
"No, but that doesn't mean anything except that it is hard for me, or any painter, to see a contemporary's work. I see mostly what I would have done, better or worse, had I painted it. I am probably more conscious of influences too than those that may creep into my own work even when I think I'm most free. Then too, painters can always spot when there has been trouble in drawing or handling a medium. Today there's an epidemic of no-can-do drawing and painting passed off as intentional. I've read a lot of twelve-dollar critical words about backgrounds that any painter worthy of the name knows damned well is unresolved fumbling. No wonder some painters decide it's easier to be what is called 'childlike' and 'primitive.' Brush, however, knows how to handle a brush and paint, and this is only his first show."
"I see how hard he worked—and that's against him in my book, because I don't like to be aware of a painter's, any artist's—mechanics. Also he has looked imitatively at European painters for his socalled American painting. Dürer, and Breughel especially. But his version is limited to craftsmanship, and you know it. Probably won a prize at school—and he'll win a lot more. He's got nothing to worry about—he'll be a big success."
