Clem laid the painting of hepaticas on the table and looked for pliers to pull the nails from the frame. Semy glanced at the painting, then took it up for closer inspection. The direct unaffected drawing, different from the variety of new and incomprehensible techniques, appeared to have been done too representationally to merit his avant-garde attention. Actually he liked the drawing and, had he seen it without benefit of his new verbal knowledge of the latest in painting, would have said so. But seeing the hepaticas in the studio, work of a man he knew, he said, "Very pretty."
There was not, Clem observed irritatedly, admiration in Semy's tone. It might have been himself being polite to Widow Doremus. Who the hell was Klug to use a patronizing tone?
"I see you don't go for Morbeau's concept of art," Semy said blandly.
"Who's Morbeau?"
Semy's expression was one of astonished indulgence. "Why, don't you know—Morbeau—the French critic. He says art to be pure must be stripped of sentimentality. I agree."
"What the hell do you know about it?" Clem challenged pugnaciously.
Semy shrugged and laughed, having no intention of being caught in a defense of Morbeau, considering that he'd only read the first two paragraphs of the statement quoted in a New York paper, and was just passing on what he'd read.
That's Semy, always sliding from under. Clem could not remember any Morbeau. But Clem was not prepared to drop the subject of Morbeau versus his hepaticas.
"All right," he said. "Is it up to the critic, or to the artist, to say what is art, and how does the critic know unless the artist tells him? By example. That is, when the artist makes art. I'll paint as I damn please. That's why I came home. I'm not a Frenchman, a European, I'm an American. I'm interested in American painting."
But as he spoke Clem felt the theories as such were not disposed of by his assertion that he was an American. He hoped Semy would not see through his groping indecisions. You come back to Congress and those Parisian bastards haunt you through a small-town showoff like Klug. The main thing was not to be put off the track.
Semy, though relishing Clem's obvious disturbance, was unprepared to become involved in an aesthetic discussion with the painter. Nevertheless, Clem's immemorial antagonism of the artist
