Selections from the Journals of Myron Stout.

SELECTIONS FROM THE JOURNALS OF MYRON STOUT EDITED BY TINA DICKEY, INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT STORR

All artists have their legendary side, and there is no story of Myron Stout that doesn't begin with tales of the extreme parsimony of his output. For Stout, showing three canvases in just over a decade was the norm. It's no wonder that writing on the Texas-born, Provincetown-based painter has long dipped into the journals he kept assiduously throughout his five-decade career. After years of rumored publication, the appearance of Selections from the Journals of Myron Stout has at last corroborated critics' thoughts on the artist's work: The excerpted entries, dating from 1950 through 1966, perforce provide a picture of Stout ruminating on nature, in particular the dunes of the Cape, and on art history, from Giotto and Ucello to Mondrian and Hofmann, as he works as an artist by other means. Call it The Daily Practice of Painting minus paint knife and canvas. The very first entry reads, "A painting should present itself as a thing becoming, rather than as having an already established existence--should present itself through a quality of becoming--"This may sound like AbEx flak, but Stout never abandoned the imperative behind the sentiment. Selections offers a window onto what it might mean to take such a painterly aphorism and observe it as an ironclad commandment.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]