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                       June 24/54
                        3A Varemer St.
                             S.F.

Dear Dorothy:

It was good to hear you and know that you and Ed are in top spirits.  I feel a little guilty that it was a matter of business that prompted the call.  However, in view of the call from San Francisco which left me without specific information yet pointed to immediate inquiry, I trust that you will forgive me.

It happens that the picture you referred to is one that I would not be averse to hanging in a Museum.  It has the content and form which carries the implications I would have seen, on such a scale, and bears another point with effectiveness which I will take the liberty, however, indelicate it may be, to mention in that room you arranged with contemporary Americans, and in which his painting was somewhat conspicuous by virtue of your effort to give his work a prominent position, which was not related to Dubuffet!  I will not take the time to discuss the several implications of this boast, and its implied denunciation of mine which thereafter might be seen in any relation to his, should be of a character to give the spectator no doubt which was concerned with elevation and magnamimity of spirt, and which was dependent on will and ruthlessness and the need to assault.

Yes, the above sounds like the competitive has raised its sordid head.  But I am concerned in this matter that as little reason as possible be given to anyone to thus dispose of those factors which are parmount with me,-and to make it almost impossible to defame or denounce those associations withut which my friend whould have been lost in his past work.  You understand that some pictures, if seized on and propagandized, can type a man to the detriment of his larger view, in the public mind.  If my work did not transcend which is popularly demanded as "style" I would have only contempt for what I have done. And it is to try to avoid this opprobrious typing that I have been concerned about what should be representative on a public wall.

Of course, any single picture is apt to accomplish this limitation.  But there are some which are less likely to yield to this form of limiting,-some which are more hevily charged, to carry beyond the categories and qualities.  The one you mention, I feel,would do this.

Now, I bring up the matter because Ossorio took the privilege, or rather, I offered it to him as a gesture, following the mattrs of price, etc., of considering an exchange before the coming fall in case he liked another picture seen later, better than one he might then select.  This permission still holds.  Therefore you may call him if you wish, and ask whether he is of the mind to