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Written for the exhibition,
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PAINTING AND SCULPTURE, 
University of Illinois, 
Urbana, 1953

There are complaints that painting has become devious and obscure and sealed from comprehension by its excessively private symbolism. 

I work under these assumptions: that no one is contained by his own skin, but shares his birth, living and death with all others; that a private symbolism is not even possible; that my painting will occupy others as it has me; that whether it does, and how soon, depends on things we cannot know -- the ultimate power of the painting and the need felt for it; that manipulation of meaning to assure an audience would destroy the reality of the work and debase the concept of communication; that good painting, as always, is a door opened to a man's spirit; that it will not repel because of its obscurity, but may because of its directness.


Written for AMERICAN ART AND ARTISTS I, 1953

The conflict between spontaneous and deliberate behavior, a great dualism of modern times, is felt keenly by the artist. It is also probably resolved most successfully by him because he deals with the actual form of the process of development, in which the static concepts of subject and object, spirit and matter, freedom and necessity, the immediate and tradition, have become harmless paradox.

Written for the exhibition,
THE NEW DECADE: THIRTY-FIVE AMERICAN PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS, Whitney Museum of American Art, 
New York, 1955

The painting surface has always been the rendezvous of what the artist knows with the unknown, which appears on it for the first time. An engrossment in the process of changing formal relations is the artist's method of relieving his self-consciousness as he approaches the mystery he hopes for. Any conscious involvement (even thinking of a battle or standing before a still-life) is good if it permits the unknown to enter the painting almost unnoticed. 

Then the painter must hold this strange thing and sometimes he can for his whole life has been a preparation for recognizing and resolving it. 


Written for the exhibition, TWELVE AMERICANS, /Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1956

There is no more forthright a declaration, and no shorter path to man's richness, nakedness and poverty than the painting he does. Nothing can be hidden on its flat surface - the least private as well as the most personal of worlds. 

It is unforeseen, disquieting, inevitable, and necessary. It says little to those occupied with only its peripheral aspects, so interesting to talk and write about. It will not return to nature, as it is a part of nature. Its meaning is carried in its relationships; and the shapes, colors and things in it exist not as separate identities at all, but as carriers. The impulse they transmit through the painting is its spirit, image and meaning.