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The Slip - 21 XI 1963

Mr. Jan van der Marck
Curator
Walker Art Center
1710 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis 3, Minnesota

Dear Jan:

If I had your home address I think I would be addressing this letter there - and less formally - for I trust our relationship has passed a shade beyond the strictly professional and might be spoke of as friendship for yours and Ingeborg's actions in your home (now) and my old home (Chi) and my new home (New York City whether I can believe it or not) contained that kind of warmth and sympathy and hospitality (reinforced by your kind and gratefully received notes) that smacks of a friend-to-friend situation. I would have it so.

Re the painting: I really feel my gesture was too slim, Jan, but some of the considerations were purely realistic, i.e. Ingeborg's getting it back to Minneapolis on the plane, possible damage, etc., but then the real clincher was the fact that you two met in August or some such 8-ish situation. I personally think you both deserve a more expansive Indiana, since I am not Rhode Island after all, but then life tends to be long and full of sweet moments, for neither am I Modigliani, and perhaps you will not always be in an apartment with so many windows full of beautiful Minnesota lake views and will need help more later. Know, though, that the little "8" has always been one of my favorite small works, better liked than the "Big 8" which you have hung so prominently.

Re (2) the paintings: Know, dear Jan, that you two could only have been happier collectively than was I singularly upon receiving word of the Walker acquisition. The "Big Four" would have been rewarding enough, but that you should select my favorite diptych was news almost too good to bear, for naturally I have come away with a soft place in my heart for the Walker (it having been one of the few other museums I visited during the formative years) and because both "Eat-Die" works have been met with such typical hard-headed coolness by everyone else. They are very "key" paintings to my work, and they assume an extra significance when hung as you have presented them - not anything shaking of course, but I think pertinent to the changing attitudes toward the painting [[underline]] as object [[/underline]]. I would not have ben at all surprised if the board had not accepted your recommendation, for that would indeed have been much more standard behaviour, so I take it you really are in a very unusual situation.