Viewing page 45 of 82

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

9/25

Dear Frank,

Hate to do this to you, but the two bulletins on the fact sheet changed things enough (not too bad) so that you'll have to check through this, draft #3. What you wrote was clear enough, I think, but I'd like to make sure. The draft enclosed begins with para #3 on page 1 and incorporates the things you sent on the models and on the canvas versions, mostly.

I'm also sending you the pages on which the notes on Borgonia[[strikethrough]],[[\strikethrough]] and the other anomalies are located. These brief texts, summarzing [[summarizing]] the fact sheet, will appear as short introductions to the catalog of photographs of samples of [[strikethrough]]a wor[[/strikethrough]] each work in each series. Please read them over. I think they are OK.

It would be very nice if Jerry O. could xerox any letter from any of those companies giving accurate spellings of all those company names and materials. Please ask him to -- you pay him enough. And I'd sleep so much better.

We are all wild to know what the terrible fight with Rachel was about [[strikethrough]]O[[/strikethrough]]-- especially Polly.

I got Livid's introduction. Awful, not because its dumb or wrong, but so stale -- kills the whole sparkle of the catalog. It will have to go and you will have to hurt her feelings -- there's no other way. I tried to think of some compromise or condensation, but there is nothing to do: it's got to be junked. Maybe you can show[[strikethrough]]no[[\strikethrough]] her the Hofmann catalog Darby did, though Millard is hardly a model, or some other one in which the introduction is about a paragaraph [[paragraph]] long and tell her something like that is what you had in mind, and that the one thing this one should not have is a recapitulation of your career.

I've been reading your letters over and [[strikethrough]]mok[[/strikethrough]] over, and learning more each time I read them. Sometimes what I learn is far afield from what you're trying to get across to me, but everything is golden to me. The truth is I get a little sick each time I see the name "Michael" coming up, but it was worth it this last time for the things you said about thepurple pictures. (You know how I felt about his attitude toward your feelings about Judd. He'd say to me, "He's got to stop liking those guys, Judd and Andre," and that may have been the first time I felt my respect for him plummet; I hated him for saying that, for losing first and foremost the sense of the relationship of artist and critic -- it was his job to meditate on your interest, not censor it -- and I guess that Literalism and Abstraction had its beginnings there, as any answer to Michael. What I like about me now is that I dont think in terms of answers to Michael, and I [[strikethrough]]can't wait[[/strikethrough]] puzzle about why you still do.) (Dont bother answering that -- it'll only depressme.)
What I meant by it being worth it for what you said about thepurple pictures is that I've begun preserving my sanity as my face fills out like my moron brother[[strikethrough]]'[[\strikethrough]]s and my hair comes out in handfulls and I heave ho all morning long by studying Mondrian, that wonderful man. In the 1912-19 period (roughly the piers-see-plus and -minus pictures) Mondrian's idea of abstraction seems to have been very close to what you described today in the purple pictures. It was as if he though of obstraction [[abstraction]] as being the ability to preserve, or project or retain an essence, you of the solid geometrical object, he of the pier and sea, what you called "the sense and use of volume without having to outline it, or actually construct it" -- he couldhave used just those words to describe what he was doing in those pictures. Later, however, his sense of what abstraction meant seems to have deepened -- in the twenties and thirties it meant above all the ability to construct a harmony parallel with that of nature, an equilibrium and evening of forces that is found only in