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[[strikethrough]] THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1936 [[/strikethrough]] 2nd Day 364 Days to come Cont crayon with delicate washes, & pencil with washes - on [[strikethrough]] cheap [/strikethrough]] scrubby paper that looks mellow from its cheapness. The drawings [[strikethrough]] hav [[/strikethrough]] are often very crude & inexperienced - but always vital & sensitive & full of the character of his subject. His personality is impossible to define, just as any unique personality is - because one has never seen it before, & has nothing to compare it with, & because the personality is not the aim where as the fundamental honesty & [[strikethrough]] & feelings [[/strikethrough]] strivings are more or less the same in all great artists, so that the personality just happens by mistake, & is indefinable & unnoticeable to him too probably. On the next floor he flowers in to bloom, & as I haven't finished his life I don't interpret from that angle. His paintings there [[strikethrough]] have such [[/strikethrough]] show real success in technique, & [[strikethrough]] are like seeing [[/strikethrough]] the whole floor is like being inside the sun. They are in sunlight colors - happy & brilliant & yellow - & so simple - & full of design & rythm [[strikethrough]] FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1936 [[/strikethrough]] 3rd Day Battle of Princeton 1777 363 Days to come Contin & honesty. They are an orgy for any eyes - so triumphant & vital that it almost hurts. Paintings say nothing to me on the whole - but these do. On the top floor is his last work. Where he begins to go to pieces. You can see he is going to pieces - there is the shell of a wonderful technique there, & the ghost of the character he is portraying - but the whole point in wanting to paint is gone. [[strikethrough]] They [[/strikethrough]] These paintings lack something indefinable that is absolutely the heart of a good painting - the reason for doing a painting at all, & the joy the painter & the audience would get [[strikethrough]] pro [[/strikethrough]] from it - pain or joy of that kind being the same sensation. His rythm in brush & conception is what makes his paintings complete[[strikethrough]]ly[[/strikethrough]] on a canvas I think - that is what rounds or squares the picture [[strikethrough]] as [[/strikethrough]] into a [[strikethrough]] finished product [[/strikethrough]] self-sufficent unit - the way design does - only his rythm seems to make the design. I refuse to pull it apart picture for picture - but how he did that much