"I thought you liked Mondrian."
"I thought so to," said Gomez.
They stopped in front of another picture; Gomez stared at it and tried to remember.
"Have you really got to write about these?" Ritchie asked nervously.
"I haven't got to, no. But Ramon would like me to devote my first article to Mondrian. I suppose he thinks it would strike the high-brow note."
"Watch yourself," said Ritchie. "Don't start off by being too destructive."
"Why not?" asked Gomez, beginning to bristle.
Ritchie's smile spread a gentle irony. "Obviously you don't know the American public. The one thing it can't stomach is to be startled. Start in by making a name for yourself: say simple, sensible things, and say them with charm. And, if you absolutely must attack someone, at least don't pick Mondrian: he's our God."
"Naturally," said Gomez; "Mondrian doesn't pose any questions at all."
Ritchie shook his head and made clucking sound with his tongue several times in sign of disapprobation."
"He poses a lot," he said.
"Yes, but not embarrassing questions."
"Oh," said Ritchie, "you mean questions about sex or the meaning of life or poverty? I was forgetting you studied in Germany. Gründlichkeit, eh?" he said, slapping the other on the back. "Don't you think that is a bit dated?"
Gomez made no reply.
"As I see it," said Ritchie, "it is no part of the painter's business to ask embarrassing questions, Suppose somebody came along and asked me whether I wanted to go to bed with my mother: I would fling him out on his ear, unless he was carrying out a piece of scientific research. I don't see why painters should have the right to ask me questions in public about my complexes. Like everybody else," he added in a conciliatory tone, "I have my troubles. But when I think they're getting me down, I dont' slip off to a museum; I call up a psychoanalyst. People should stick to their jobs: a psychosnslyst gives me confidence because he started off by being psychoanalyzed himself. So long as painters don't do that, they're talking at cross-purposes, and I shall not ask them to make me look at myself."
"What will you ask of them?" Gomez put in, more for the sake of saying something than because he wanted to know. He was looking at the picture with surly hostility. He was thinking: "Transparent as water."
"I ask them for innocence," said Ritchie. "This picture–"
"Well, what about it?"
"It's just seraphic! said Ritchie ecstatically. :We Americans like painting to appeal to happy people or to people who are trying to be happy."
"I'm not happy," said Gomez, "and I would be a bastard id I tried to be, what with all my friends either in prison or shot."
Ritchie clucked his tongue again. "Look," he said, "I know all about your personal troubles. Fascisim, the defeat of the Allies, Spain, your wife, your kid–sure!" But it's a good thing to rise above all that occasionally."
"Not for one single, solitary moment!" Gomez protested. "Not for a single moment!"
Ritchie flushed slightly.
"What did you used to paint, then? he asked in a hurt tone? "Strikes? Massacres? Capitalists in stovepipe hats? Soldiers firing on people?"
Gomez smiled. "You know, I've never much believed in revolutionary art. And at present I don't believe in it at all."
"Well then, we agree, eh?" said Ritchie.
"Perhaps. The trouble is I wonder if I haven't lost my faith in art of any kind."
"And in revolution?" Ritchie asked.
Gomez said nothing. Ritchie smiled again.
"You know, you European intellectuals are really very funny. Where action is concerned, you suffer from an inferiority complex"...
Jean-Paul Sartre, Troubled Sleep
