Scanning Picasso
Sir:
You have done a service in presenting your story on Picasso and the French artists in the Venice biennial [TIME, June 26] in such a relatively sober and thoughtful manner . . .
EDGAR C. SCHENCK
Director
Albright Art Gallery
Buffalo, N.Y.
Sir:
. . . One of the best and most sensible discussions of modern art yet . . .
LLOYD HALVERSON
Medford, Ore.
Sir:
Your beautiful color reproductions . . . were a new high for TIME . . .
EDWARD WINTER
Cleveland, Ohio
Sir:
A good trial run for your new scanning color-separator. If it can scan Picasso, it can stand anything.
LOUIS EAGAN
New Orleans, La.
Sir:
Ernest Hamlin Baker's weird cover portrait of Pablo Picasso should be subtitled "Poetic Justice."
ALBERT LEE
New York City
Sir:
Why not some sane art in your pages? Why must we always look at psychopathic doodles of the queer, the charlatan, the tongue-in-cheek jests of artists who can draw or paint and the childish "primitives" of those who cannot . . .?
HURLSTONE FAIRCHILD
Tucson, Ariz.
Sir:
. . . The only way I can explain the present vogue [of modern art] is by the jaded appetites of our intelligentsia, their lack of faith in themselves and their fellow men, the artificiality of their way of life . . .
PARKE PAYNE
Arlington, Va.
Sir:
TIME explains that in the philosophy of modern artists nature is accepted as "simply a jumping off place" from which to place colors and forms on canvas.
Could it be that their artistic philosophy is itself a jumping off place? If so, why do they hesitate ?
G. E. DENNIS
Avon, N.J.
Pass the Erudition
Sir:
Mr. Niebuhr has, in my opinion, missed the boat completely in his analysis of individualism [TIME, June 26] ...
The community is not as primordial as the individual. Society is erected on nothing but the sacrifices each of us makes of his individualism in order to enjoy the supposed advantages of social living. Man, in common with the other animals, is a biologic unit and his civilization is a latter-day phenomenon . . .
Neither is Mr. Niebuhr's thesis that the Renaissance movement toward glorifying the individual was a wicked flight into paganism well taken. It could just as logically be argued that this was a reaction against the depressing, guilt-producing dogma of the church that man is innately evil, and represented a flight into freedom, away from dogma contrary to man's nature.
Mr., Niebuhr, with his mystical emphasis on "sin," is, in my opinion, just as guilty of mental astigmatism as was Karl Marx, who was blinded to everything but man's economic side.
NORMAN A. HARVEY, M.D.
Gloucester, Mass.
Sir:
Reinhold Niebuhr's theology ... is a bit abstruse to the obtuse (most of us).
Would not this learned, godly man less circumscribe his consecrated task if he would simply praise the Lord and pass the erudition ?
M. A. TANCOCK
Sacramento, Calif.
Waltham & the Swiss
Sir:
The June 19 issue of TIME reports that 2,000 citizens and ex-employees of the closed Waltham Watch Co. paraded in Waltham,
Mass., and protested in rhyme against the imports of Swiss watches . . . TIME quoted the following rhyme:
The Swiss can yodel, The Swiss can yell. And Waltham Watch Can go to hell.
. . . TIME errs . . .
One of the floats had a Swiss alp built on it and a sign which said:
The Swiss yodel The Swiss yell: Waltham Watch Has gone to H--l!
. . . The Waltham Watch Co. will time a second century after it is successfully reorganized . . .
WALTER W. CENERAZZO
President
American Watch Workers' Union
Waltham, Mass.
Pastor Bauer & the Masons
Sir:
The brevity of your analysis of Pastor Bauer's reasons for opposing Freemasonry [TIME, June 26] is apt to lead the average reader to an unjustified bias against the Lutheran Church . . .
Here is a statement on the contradiction between Christianity and Masonry by a Mason who frankly renounced Christianity: "If 'we are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, by faith and not for our own works or deservings' (Christianity), then it cannot possibly be true that the All-Seeing Eye 'pervades the inmost recesses of the human heart and will reward us according to our merits' (Masonry). One of these declarations excludes the other . . ."
(REV.) PAUL G. BRETSCHER
Redeemer Ev. Lutheran Church
New Orleans, La.
Sir:
In spite of what the Rev. Walter Bauer says, a Mason can be a Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, Moslem, etc. Any man . . . who believes in Masonry is on the right path to peace of mind and soul . . .
WILLIAM F. BYRNE
Major, U.S.A., Ret.
North Weymouth, Mass.
Sir:
... If Pastor Bauer could draw more Masons to his church, it would serve to broaden him, and he would learn that he has no more claim on Jesus than have his enlightened Masonic brethren.
THOS. R. FREEBODY
New York City
Nothing to It
Sir:
You state [of the gambler who made 28 straight passes with dice]: "If he had left his winnings on the table he could have run his original $2 into at least $289,406,976" [TIME, June 19].
To be exact, starting with a $2 bet, and leaving his winnings on the table, the player would . . . take in $536,870,912. He started with $2, therefore his winnings would be $536,870,910.
[Or] assuming after his first throw he puts the $2 he started with into his pocket and continues to play with his winnings, he would accumulate only $268,435,456 . . .
How in the world did you arrive at the figure of $289,406,976?
DAVID M. WEINBERG
New York City
P: Easy; on the sixth pass we multiplied 64 by 2 and got 138.--ED.
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