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DESK COPY
R Robie[[?]]

Roy De Forest has expressed the fantasy spirit of his art in a few words.

One day while talking to an obscure poet, I expressed my belief in the artificer as an eccentric individual creating fantasy art with the amazing intention of totally building a miniature cosmos into which the artful alchemist could retire with all his friends, animals and paraphernalia.

And so said we, "The work of a peculiar and eccentric, fastidious being can truly be described as a mechanic and conductor of the convoluted, rambling, round about vehicle on a journey to central Tibet in the company of a French Count and his constant companion, a mangy sheepdog of Lombardy. The mechanical artificer travels in a phantasmagoric micro-world, small and infinitely compact, as the light of a dwarf star imploded inward as it collapses paradise and hell into one vanishing whole, while we are forever with our joys, sorrows and unrequited love. A black dog in the reconstructed night is mysterious and hermetic in the darkness but slyly cunning and opulent in the firelight.

"Furthermore," wrote an obscene hyena, "maniacal art is a squirrel in the forest of visual delights." "Scenic nature art constitutes a scarlet robot striding forward immune to the light of distant street lamps," announced the horse of a different color. "Tinted canvas beckons the dogmatic fellow to antisocial aristocracy," shouted Rover, a domesticated but still recalcitrant Dingo. "I give a howl to the phantasmagoric artist," barked Samuel Johnson, distinguished short-haired poet of the Terriers. He growled, "Oh how I abhor the fond lap dogs, the surly spaniels - those clever thieves of current taste. And what is current taste but old desires made palatable by present boredom."

All of us, the obscure poet, myself (obscure visual constructor of mechanical delights), a traveling French Count and his mangy sheepdog, a black mongrel of the night, an obscene hyena, Samuel Johnson (distinguished Terrier), and Rover (domesticated Dingo) shouted, barked and howled, "Picturesque art is now and forever the hope of the future as well as the dream of the past."

"All too true," lisped the horse of a different color as he stood marking the earth with his translucent hooves. Would that I could have read the significance of those lovely abstract channels chisled in the moist earth.

Roy De Forest