``What do you study?'' I asked. I was fascinated; just listening to him made me feel intelligent.

``I'm studying anatomy with Burns,'' he replied. ``Maybe you know him. He teaches at the Manhattan School of Art.'' I nodded. I had studied with Burns ten years before, during the scholarship year the Manhattan gave me, along with the five-hundred dollar prize for my paintings of bums on Hudson Street. Burns and I had not loved each other. ``I'm also studying enameling with Hajime Iijima,'' he went on, ``and twice a week I go to a life class taught by Pendleton.''

``Osric Pendleton?'' I said. ``My God, is he still alive? He must be a million years old. I went to a retrospective of his work when I was eighteen, and I thought he was a contemporary of Cezanne's.''

``Not quite.'' Askington laughed. ``He's about sixty, now. Still painting, still a kind of modern impressionist, beautiful canvases of mountains and farms. He even makes the city look like one of Thoreau's hangouts. I've always admired him, and when I heard he was taking a few pupils, I went to him and joined his class.''

``Yes, it sounds great,'' I said, ``but suppose you don't think of yourself as an impressionist painter?''

``You're missing the point,'' he said. ``He has the magical eye. And he is a great man. Contact with him is stimulating. And that's the trouble with so many artists today. They lack stimulation. They sit alone in their rooms and try to paint, and only succeed in isolating themselves still farther from life. That's one of the reasons art is becoming a useless occupation. In the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, right up to the early nineteenth century, the painter was a giant in the world. He was an artisan, a man who studied his trade and developed his craftsmanship the way a goldsmith or a wood carver did. He filled a real need, showing society what it looked like, turning it inside out, portraying its wars and its leaders, its ugliness and its beauties, reflecting its profound religious impulses. He was a propagandist -- they weren't afraid of the word, then -- satirist, nature lover, philosopher, scientist, what you will, a member of every party and of no party. But look at us today! We hold safe little jobs illustrating tooth-paste ads or the salacious incidents in trivial novels, and most of our easel painting is nothing but picking the fluff out of the navel so it can be contemplated in greater purity. A bunch of amateur dervishes! What we need is to get back to the group, to learning and apprenticeship, to the cafe and the school.''