Georgia O'Teeffe
Lake Erie
M.L.

P. O. B.

201

# FRAMES

WITH REFERENCE TO MARIN

NATURE makes no frames for what we see save the physical conditions of our vision and the sensibility with which we approach the world.

The gold—or other—rectangles whether carved or plain, with or without mats, which we have been used to seeing on pictures, as a device to separate the picture from the world and hold a glass in place over it—these frames are a man-made convention.

How unthinkingly we continue to accept this convention has often been carried home to me—never more so than at the exhibition of John Marin's recent (1932-3) etchings, oil paintings and water colors at An American Place, December-January, 1933-4.

I had seen Marin paint some of these pictures, stood and sat with him at the head of Cape Split in Addison, Maine, when the seas, after a storm, rolled in curving and thundering in bursts of foam on the granite headland.

I had seen and heard how Marin received in his deepest self the aspects of sky and sea and coast, the very rhythms of the furious and illimitable and resistless waters. To translate these aspects of a world—known to few—and to reveal them in their tensions and movement of grandeur, Marin had to go outside

the realm of picture making as even many who had been fol-
lowing his work knew it.

And so, when at last he came to present these pictures, it was
inevitable and a happy movement of genius that he should play
in the frames in the same spirit of invention, daring and fer-
tility that he had played with the forces of nature speaking
through him in the water colors and oils. Gold and chromium,
metals in shining lines and designs, designs of his own painting,
even a gold star—“Stella Maris” as Cary Ross remarked to me—
seemed not alone to frame the pictures but to carry on their
lyric illimitably beyond frame, beyond the room, into time and
space.

Here again Marin was bending, breaking through, recasting
in vital forms the brittle shell that would not contain him, of a
convention called frames. And I thought not without pity of
the people who preferred hanging on to the convention rather
than going with Marin on his glorious adventure.

HERBERT J. SELIGMANN

8 January 1934

“IT MUST BE SAID”
NUMBER THREE
AN AMERICAN PLACE
509 MADISON AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY

New York
February 5 1934

My dear Mr. Phillips

Pardon my delay in acknowledging receipt of your very kind letter of the 30th ult. I see you standing before that Marin oil and I see you standing there ever since that hour during which you seemed to drink in that painting of Marin's with about the same passion that I drank it in as I lived with it all those weeks that it was hanging on the wall.

I have your proposition. I know that that particular Marin could not be in better hands than yours but I must consider Marin, really Marin's family, before I consider the painting and before I consider you, that is your passion. When you payed $4000.00 for the magnificent Marin New York watercolor we were in other times. In those times had this oil existed I certainly would have put a price on it of at least $8000.00 to $10,000.00. $3000.00 at present is positively ridiculous for a work of art like that for it is a great work of art, unique in America. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art is paying Rehn a huge amount of money these days for a "perfect" Speicher which is completely dead and Marin is virtually ignored by all except you and myself and a few others who are even more impoverished than you are my blood boils and I see red. And yours must boil too if I know you at all.

The Marin watercolor you have, if it were still
here, as are its mates, I would be asking $1800.00 for, so
between the $1800.00 and the $3000.00 there really is a dif-
ference of $1200.00. On the old basis of $4000.00 you payed
and the $8000.00 which is the minimum which would have been
asked for the Marin oil at that time, if it had existed, the
difference would have been $4000.00, so you see the $1200.00
I now suggest is really a bagatelle, although I realize that
every dollar nowadays is a Mount Everest of money.

Now I suggest, if it is at all possible for you, that
you take the oil, return the watercolor and that you give Marin
$100.00 a month for a year. I am sure even though your con-
science will whisper "Nay" to you, your passion and your real
love for true art will howl "Yea" into both your ears and so
drown the "Nay". I do not want to tempt you. The picture can
wait and maybe in the near future we'll find some other way of
getting it into your hands for as I said before I believe it
should belong there.

O'Keeffe's show is creating a sensation. It will be
on for another six weeks. If you can you and your wife must see
it. I think both of you will be amazed and get a new angle on
the great importance of this artist.

With cordial greeting,

Your old

it cannot be said that his independ-
ence has carried him far in the mat-
ter of composition or that he has
yet formed an acceptable style. His
work intimates promise rather than
achievement.

At his "American Place" Mr. Stieg-
litz assembles a number of the paint-
ings by Georgia O'Keefe, paintings of
various dates. The best thing in the
group is a study of some yellow pears,
an essay in purely representational
vein. But the more abstract designs
have their charm, particularly in the
matter of color, which seems simple
in mass but is really modulated
through one tone after another with
great subtlety. As in previous exhi-
bitions, Miss O'Keefe gains her effect
not only through the purity and force
of her technique but through her
thoroughgoing originality. No one else
could have painted these swelling har-
monies. In her field she is unique.

There are at the Seligman gallery
a number of sculptures by Helen Haas,
portraits of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt,
Mr. Michael Arlen, Miss Dorothy

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
OF ART

THE Metropolitan Museum of Art, in its desire to promote art education, has been permitting both photographs and copies or studies to be made of all objects of art which come into its possession unless they are copyrighted or unless some contrary desire has been expressed by the artist. It has been suggested that some artists may not be aware of the desire of the Museum to follow their wishes in this particular, whether they have protected themselves by copyright or not. Hence this circular letter is sent to all living artists who are represented in the Museum collections, to notify them of this general policy and particularly to tell them of the Museum's willingness to conform in this respect entirely to their wishes.

The Museum will not permit photographs or copies to be made of the work of any living artist who notifies it of such a desire in writing so that the notice may become part of the official files. The Museum, however, does not wish to impose the burden of any reply to this circular letter, upon artists who are willing to continue to have photographs and copies or studies of their work made and it will

for S.S. "Queen of Bermuda"

George O'Hearn
"Pen apet"

Somerset Bridge
Bermuda