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it just in case you might be interested. It is an idea which might get a certain amount of publicity, and some screwball might even buy it. I suppose I have been influenced a lot in its coming to a head by reading about Kiesler's show in TIME magazine (which I had seen by accident since I had gone to the Amerika Haus to read the article about Marlon brandon which immediately preceded it). At any rate it is not exactly the same and it is something I have always been doing in a small way.  When I got the idea the other night I filed it away because I didn't have the materials to work on it now anyhow. But out of a blue sky something came up today which will make it possible to go ahead and I am going to do so at once. Well here it is.

I have always been interested in things with discrete parts. I like the kind of thing that can be taken apart and of which all the parts will look good. It may be a native trait or it may come from being around and working in the factory at an early age. I always liked the Model T for that reason. And I liked the speculation in Hindoo philosophy about the soul of the chariot, whether there was any chariot besides the assembly or total configuration of the parts. I can remember now that when my mother drove the trotters, the men could take the sulky entirely apart and wrap each piece separately. I liked the fact that the Japanese house is all made beforehand and each piece wrapped in paper and brought to the site to be assembled.

This idea has never been very popular among painters. Braque said, "To construct is to assemble homogenous parts; to build is to create unity from heterogenous parts. Cezanne built." But I do not believe it is that simple because the nature of parts is that they change in relation to one another. One of the things which has always intrigued me in the work of Wright, Carbusier, and Ven der Rohe has been their obsession with unit systems, modules, and the like.

I have always been very analytical about this aspect of pictures and to a certain extent I suppose it would be fair to say that I have always sought a formula for making them. Damning as this must seem I feel that the only real expression comes when the painter has found his method. This is why I suggested that Goodnough ask the painters how they began (which suggestion is what led to the big deal on 8th St., the symposium or whatever it was called). I always felt that those who sought an approach were the ones who did something while those who painted nice pictures did not. I know that Barney doesn't like Seurat, and perhaps few do, but I have greatly admired the way he built up the Grand Jatte.