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January 18, 1968
Dan Flavin 
Valley View Drive
Lake Valhalla
Cold Springs, New York 10516

Dear Dan,

Thanks for your letters; no matter how many particular points I might agree with (or concede) -- though I cant think offhand of any -- our disagreements run deep. I would tend flat out to call the letter a) sentimental b) romantic and c) hypocritical. The idea that groups of artists appear at certain moments and seen for those moments (later criticism may make finer distinctions) to share certain preoccupations and therefore produce works which have such in common and therefore come to be called a "movement" and are often judged in terms of the interests of that movement is perfectly sensible and in itself neither a bad nor a good critical device. What's done with it by particular critics is another matter: that's not what you had in mind. You had in mind some sentimental notion that somehow the practice of each individual artist is flattened by discussion of his relations to a group of other artists with seemingly similar ideas.
Claes never, to my knowledge, rejected the idea that he was a Pop artist (while he was one) and even discussed his work in terms of the Pop movements. It remained for the critics to distinguish him to the extent that his work called for it. He is tougher than you. Matisse engaged with and then transcended the Pauve group in exactly the way I think Claes will (or has) gone beyond the limits of the Pop movement and, incidentally, as I think Boy Lichtenstein, for example has not. Nord do I see anything at all wrong in discussing Don Judd, Bob Hurrs, Sol Levitt, Mike Steiner, etc. as ABC, Minimal, Literalist, or whatever -- only, again, a sentimentalist could place so much tearful emphasis on the particular designation -- rather I think it would be insanity for critics to pretend the appearance of all these artists at roughly the same time, working in a particuarly different way from the artists precious to them, has non significance. What's important is what the critic says about the individual and the group, and not the name under which he discussed them all, and certainly not the idea that he discusses them all as if they have something in common.
IN this connection, I need from you a list of these "authentic" artists who like you suffer at the idea that such things as art movements exist. You might also try to cull from among them those who -- on those grounds -- refuse to partake in exhibitions of "movements." Or do they just talk?
To call abstract art a movement wasn't the most accurate language I could have used. Still, the idea that engagement with abstract art produces the best art around is, it seems to me, at least a respectful critical position, a clear enough way of saying what I like. That you dont like Olitski or Bannard seems to me another question, and one we can discuss as differences in taste, opinion. That you dont regard any of the four I've named as standing for the best art around does indeed give us grounds for a discussion, but not unless you tell me who is better, which you pointedly refrain from doing in your letter. I found your section on Stella most offensive: no critic worthy of respect would, in an attack on the quality of Stella's work, make the romantic charges you do -- sell out to the mean and corrupt commercial world. You all -- you and Clarence and whoever else among the "authentic" artists you have in mind -- function in the same commercial world add you have no grounds for saying that Frank is any more a victim of it -- in terms of the quality of his work -- than you are.