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March 6 '39

The 11th Annual Artists show opens today in town & from what I see in the papers I'm damn glad I don't have to be at the reception where one has to put up with the Society stuff - receiving lines & receptionists who don't amount to a damn as far as the real artists are secretly concerned.

When I think of Torrey the portrait painter, Shirley Russell and her trite flowers, I am vividly reminded of the society doctors in "The Citadel." The true artist walks in the wilderness.

The true artist must know: Beauty is conditioned response for all but himself. For himself, beauty is that strange perception that has no laws, no association, no familiarity. It has no name, it is utterly new. Great art, then, follows no formula

The world's greatest have been creators

Virginia today sent a German calendar of photographs of the country. The pictures are beautiful to the eyes of those who seek pleasant familiarity, sweet associations.

Why must this keep on forever (it seems) - this re-glorifying, re-stating of the beauty of the landscape expressed in trite arrangements of trees, mt., land, etc. And what have painters to gain & give who still paint in the usual landscape style - they are barely one step ahead of the camera. It seems that whatever originality has been achieved by different landscape painters is only the result of a conscious or unconscious effort not to be photographic. Art is too great to spend its colors outwitting the camera.

We need an entirely new concept of painting, a new perspective; a new world in this world to glorify.