Jean Helion, the French painter who died at eighty-three in 1987, brought together in his copious and essential writing on art the theoretical authority of the intellectual and the fundamental insights of the craftsman in his studio. His writing extended throughout the five decades or more of his career.

"This book collects, for the first time, texts by Haelion published originally in English in magazines both well-known and obscure, including Partisan Review, Burlington Magazine, and Art and Literature. In these incisive and beautifully lucid essays, notes, and interviews from almost five decades, on subjects ranging from the abstract artist's role in society to the traditions of figure painting, Haelion applies a powerful intellectual authority to the studio insights of the working artist"--Dust jacket.