John Sloan, George Luks—"I'm sure it will be different," she repeated lamely.
"What are the New York crowd doing? I've lost touch these last few years."
"To tell you the truth," she began, realizing she was using Lucy's favorite expression, "I haven't seen much of New York painting. Of course, there are Bellows, Henri, Sloan, and Luks, but they aren't of the new abstract school, as you know—though I hear Sloan is off on a new tangent, painting nudes in a new style, crosshatching they call it. Then there's John Marin, who is wonderful."
"That isn't what I mean, and Marin is only a water colorist."
"I don't care what he paints in, he's got it."
Clem jealously noted the positiveness with which she spoke of Marin. "Oh, I know he's good."
She decided this was not the time to debate the relative merits of a medium. "There is a big French show at Durand Ruel's you will certainly want to see. New Picassos, quite different; some stunning Matisses, which remind me of very early Persian miniatures I saw at the Metropolitan, a new Spaniard, Miro; Rouault—everything up to surrealism and Mondrian. I don't care for everything there—but it's an exciting exhibition."
"I'm not interested in decadent French art," he rejected loftily. "America doesn't have to kowtow to European culture."
"I know," she soothed him, though it struck her as odd that a painter could refuse art on the grounds of nationality while stating himself as intensely national, "but I thought you might like to see what's going on in Paris too. Several of the canvases in the show were loaned by a collector here whom I know. His name is Raymond Figente."
"I know him well. Is he still doing those little terra cottas?"
"Imagine you knowing Figente! Yes indeed he does. Do you know his friend, Paul Vermillion the painter?"
"Is that guy here? Last I heard he was mixed up with a singer in Paris. What's he doing?" he asked in a disparaging tone that startled her.
"I don't know. I met him about two weeks ago at Simone Calvette's opening. I've never seen his paintings."
"Same old Vermillion, the painter who never shows his work," Clem scoffed.
"Maybe he doesn't feel he's ready," she defended.
