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8.
feeling.

From Burchfield & Hopper we know the full dimensions of our houses, their people & the philosophy of their immediate landscapes. Grant Wood gives something of mid-western people but his attitude borders on the smart, There is too much timeliness & a bloom of affectation in his work & while no disapproval of the smart is meant,  a person of his ability can do more & one remembers an american tendency to succeed with the intermediate smart rather than risk the embarrassing accusation of snobbery & the chance of failure in attempting the important. There is smallness of motivation.

It may seem strange to mention slightly three good men in the present & criticise sharply at least four but this is a reaction to another american trait, that of everyone rushing to do the thing he has heard someone made money in. The "american scene" is on a boom & it is fast becoming a desecrated area. There is no saving it from being painted & it is hardly necessary to say that not all will be desecration. Some will know where to get the ore & time will prove them off & on.

East Hill
17 September 1934