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 styles have been very good publicity for him, it has kept up the public's interest."

"You make it sound like the dressmakers' yearly changes of fashion. And there aren't as many variations in his style as is believed, they are all variations on the same theme, which is all right. But, as Degas said, 'art isn't a sport!'"

"Come now, the next thing you'll be telling us is that you paint for yourself alone," Vedder spluttered.

"That should appeal to you as an avant-garde champion. To paraphrase Klee—'Who can appreciate me better than myself?'"

Vermillion retorted flippantly, hoping to end the discussion.

"Klee!" Clem scoffed belligerently. "The ultimate in European decadence. New York may be impressed with Paris, but not the real America where I come from. A row of smokestacks is as beautiful as the Parthenon. More, because they're functional."

Vermillion peered at him hazily. "You mean you're the latest art pope through which a new aesthetic, which is to say pioneer, U.S.A. speaks? Only popes are infallible, artists never—as you should know—or they'd stop after the first painting. A painter doesn't work as an artist for a political slogan or patron, any more than for a prince. Nor is he a geographer."

The Marqués laughed. "I am certain, Senor Artist, you would give absolution to some painters, with patrons, who practiced their art in Spain—let us say, Velasquez, Goya, and El Greco.

"The point is good—especially with reference to El Greco, a foreigner in Spain, than which, as you know, nothing could be worse in Spain. El Greco wasn't merely a Cretan or a naturalized Spaniard. A painter's native land is something he sees in his vision as an image and then paints. With Chardin it was a copper pot, quill pen, dead hare, or his kitchen with his wife and children. Was Mozart only an Austrian?"

"I say America has its own art," Clem said angrily, hoping Vedder wasn't being taken in by Vermillion's fast talk.

As he paused to take another drink there were hopeful shiftings among those who hoped the drunk painter's boring art talk was over, but Vermillion, turning his head to see Brush, blithely resumed. "Who was your American-Indian forefather—was he English, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavian, French, Irish, Italian, Hungarian, Negro?"

"I come from pioneer stock and not from New York which is not Rh