TWO years ago, TIME'S Art Editor Alexander Eliot rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter and carefully composed a memo to Senior Editor Edward Cerf. The memo developed an idea that Eliot had been trying out on his friends in the art world and his colleagues, including TIME Art Director Michael Phillips and myself. "We now have the opportunity," Eliot wrote, "of producing the first really handsome historical survey of American art ever published. The raw material for such a book is already ours." By raw material, Eliot meant an impressive collection of 1,069 color plates printed in the Art section since 1951, when TIME began regular use of full-color pages to illustrate the section.

"On the TIME-honored principle that human beings are interested primarily in other humans," he wrote,

"chief emphasis of the text would be on the artists themselves--their lives, philosophies and working methods. The next emphasis would be on their work, describing the qualities that made each picture alive and unique. Finally the time, place and spirit surrounding the artists and inspiring their art should be evoked." Eliot summed up the need for such a book in one three-word sentence: American art matters.

Editor Cerf was convinced. With encouraging approval of Editor-in-Chief Henry R. Luce, Managing Editor Roy Alexander and myself, he assigned a full-time writer

to the project. The writer was, of course, Alexander Eliot. The task of designing and producing the book went to Art Director Phillips.

This week, I am happy to announce, Alexander Eliot's exciting new book, THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF AMERICAN PAINTING (328 pp.; 250 full-color plates) is rolling off the Chicago presses

of R. R. Donnelley & Sons. By Nov. 1, it will be distributed by Random House to bookstores in the U.S. and later abroad.

Author Eliot, 38, is an art editor with deep roots and long training in his field. A child dauber, he was ten when he first became aware of others' paintings. Borrowing his father's bicycle one day to visit a cubist exhibition at Smith College, where his father is a professor, he promised to be back in two hours, so father could ride to his English class. When Professor Eliot stormed into the gallery five hours later, his son was staring at an early Picasso "with the gaze small boys usually reserve for double banana splits. A fatherly swat brought Alex to, but it also woke him. he recalls, to the sudden awareness that for him a painting might be more important than a bicycle.

At the Loomis School in Windsor, Conn., Eliot learned to draw and paint, trying style after style. At Black Mountain College he was influenced by Abstractionist Josef Albers; later, at the Boston Museum School, he turned more conservative. At 21, after

exhibiting in Boston and New York, Eliot opened a small gallery in Boston. But he was turning more and more to words as a medium of self-expression. After a stint with the MARCH OF TIME, and wartime duty in the Office of War Information, he joined TIME in 1945 as a contributing editor.

At first Eliot wrote Sport stories, but soon he gravitated to Art (he went back to Sport once to do a cover story on the Red Sox' Slugger Ted Williams). Partly through his efforts, the Art department became the first regular art color section in a weekly magazine. Of his two TIME jobs, Eliot says: "Sport is easier to write. You can always tell who won. In art, the returns don't come in for a couple of centuries."

Although Eliot, more than any other person, was responsible for assessing the returns on American painting for the past three centuries, he refuses to take full credit. "Such a book would not have been possible without the tremendous resources of the magazine," he says. "Like all other TIME projects, it was a group effort."

One of the most important members of the group was Art Director Phillips. His job was to design a book to meet the following specifications: it would be larger than TIME-size; it would be printed in big, clear type; it would contain a record-breaking 250 full-color reproductions of the utmost fidelity, including more than 40 new plates; and each painting would be reproduced in its entirety.

Phillips, who studied at Yale's Art School and the Art Students League, saw that one of his biggest problems would be color fidelity. Although TIME'S art color pages are as true to the original paintings as high-speed magazine printing will allow, slower printing and fine book paper would enhance the color quality. Phillips planned to send proofs of all color pages to museums and picture owners to correct against the original paintings. Managing Editor Alexander had a better idea. "Go yourself," he told Phillips. Thus began for Mike Phillips an extraordinary journalistic odyssey. By plane, car and train he visited 65 U.S. cities from coast to coast, covering 25,000 miles in ten weeks, sending back corrections to the engravers.

Between trips, Phillips spent his time in New York, designing and laying out the book, binding and jacket.

He turned out eight jackets before he chose the present black and gold design showing Thomas Eakins' memorable painting of scullers on the Schuylkill. The bindings went through seven versions before he chose grey tweed for the regular edition, and white with gold stamping for the de luxe boxed edition. I am sure you will agree that the final result of all Phillips' travel and painstaking toil live up to Eliot's original concept: the first really handsome historical survey of American art ever published.

Finally, a word about Eliot's (and TIME'S) major reason for believing that a book on American painting was needed--the conviction that American art matters. Over the centuries, American art has reflected American life; it has been shaped by American forces. Its viewpoints and subject matter are its own. It does indeed open a thousand windows on our heritage. This week when I saw the proofs of American Painting, I could see what Eliot meant. In his introduction to the book, National Gallery Director John Walker puts it well in a few words: "The paintings in this book speak a universal language. They tell objectively and without propaganda the story of this country."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.