Three Dialogues
Encyclopedia
Originally published in transition 49
Transition (literary journal)
transition was an experimental literary journal that featured surrealist, expressionist, and Dada art and artists. It was founded in 1927 by poet Eugene Jolas and his wife Maria McDonald and published in Paris...

 in 1949, Three Dialogues represents a small part (fewer than 3000 words) of a correspondence between Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

 and Georges Duthuit about the nature of contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

, with particular reference to the work of Pierre Tal-Coat
Pierre Tal-Coat
Pierre Tal-Coat was a French artist considered to be one of the founders of Tachisme.-Life and work:...

, André Masson
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...

 and Bram van Velde
Bram van Velde
Bram van Velde was a Dutch painter known for an intensely colored and geometric semi-representational painting style related to Tachisme, and Lyrical Abstraction...

. It might more accurately be said that beneath these surface references may be found an invaluable commentary on Beckett's own struggle with expression at a particularly creative and pivotal period of his life. A frequently quoted example is the following recommendation, ostensibly for what Tal Coat's work should strive towards: "The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express."

A great strength of these dialogue
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....

s is the wit of both participants, combined with Duthuit's persistent and intelligent challenges to Beckett's pessimism, as in his reply to the above recommendation: "But that is a violently extreme and personal point of view, of no help to us in the matter of Tal Coat." Beckett's only answer to that is, appropriately enough, silence.

Roughly, the scheme of the dialogues is as follows. Beckett is critical first of Tal Coat and then of Masson (both of whom Duthuit defends and admires) for continuing the failures of the traditional art which they claim to challenge or reject. By way of contrast, he holds up the work of his friend Bram van Velde, although Duthuit appears exasperated (or mock-exasperated) that Beckett's commentary seems continually to refer back to his own preoccupations: "Try and bear in mind that the subject under discussion is not yourself..."

Other revealing comments made by Beckett in the dialogues include: "I speak of an art turning from [the plane of the feasible] in disgust, weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road." He also speaks of his "dream of an art unresentful of its insuperable indigence and too proud for the farce of giving and receiving."

Despite the unrelenting pessimism
Pessimism
Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...

of Beckett's arguments, these dialogues are charged with a self-deprecating good humour that help to throw light on the fundamental paradox of seeking (and finding) brilliantly expressive ways to express that nothing meaningful can ever be expressed. At the end of the first dialogue, Beckett's silence is met with Duthuit's rejoinder that "perhaps that is enough for today"); at the end of the second, Beckett "exits weeping" when Duthuit asks, "Are we really to deplore the painting that is rallying, among all the things of time that pass and hurry us away, towards a time that endures and gives increase?"; the third ends with Beckett remembering warmly that, "I am mistaken, I am mistaken."
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