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7.

technics. There are many using perfectly american methods, painting the fields of the middle west who still fail to give a significance to their work.

John Sloan has painted a good picture of a ferry boat, it is good conventional painting with something personal & he has since painted & etched innumerable records of the daily scene, none of them important technicly & of no especial observation, depth or maturity. He is registered as among the ardently important. John Steuart Curry with his technical poverty & confusion is another who lacks perception to get any more than surface or an affectation of significance. Benton through the use of cheap ideas, colors, & with a Saint Vitus theory of design has been able to make an impression that will someday be seen through if the buildings in which he displays last that long. He has collected probably everyone of the externals of current life, all from a single obvious viewpoint & without humanism or mental dignity. These he has used with a style that does nothing to enlarge them, but amalgamates them in a not uncontrolled though highly active composition that passes for vital. Benton has capitalised on everything that at first glance might unfortunately be [[strikethrough]] called [[/strikethrough]] considered United States.

George Bellows carried all the traits I have mentioned as the essentially american. He used the daily scene, or he went back a few decades for his backgrounds, or he did war scenes, but he always did them with an american mind & while he was certainly aware of it I doubt if he ever said much about it or urged anyone to paint american who had no more than a radio or tourist rest viewpoint. In the war series one has an excellent chance to see how the american mind shows itself in alien subjects. The lithographs are melodramatic, overshot, but with attempts at idealism & mysticism, the american excessive action and embarrassed half stated religious