respects, his art improves steadily. [F]

[Footnote F: _Salon d'automne_, 1921: It has again made a big stride
forward. Segonzac is now amongst the best painters in France.]

"Sa peinture a une petite côté vicieuse qui est adorable"--I have heard
the phrase so often that I can but repeat it. Marie Laurencin's painting
is adorable; we can never like her enough for liking her own femininity
so well, and for showing all her charming talent instead of smothering
it in an effort to paint like a man; but she is not a great artist--she
is not even the best woman painter alive. She is barely as good as Dufy
(a contemporary of Picasso unless I mistake, but for many years known
rather as a decorator and illustrator than a painter in oils) who,
while he confined himself to designing for the upholsterers and making
"images," was very good indeed. His oil-paintings are another matter.
Dufy has a formula for making pictures; he has a _cliché_ for a tree, a
house, a chimney, even for the smoke coming out of a chimney. In this
way he can be sure of producing a pretty article, and, what is more, an
article the public likes.

Very different is the art of Kisling. Rarely does he produce one of
those pictures so appetizing that one fancies they must be good to eat.
What you will find in his work, besides much good painting, is a serious
preoccupation with the problem of externalizing in form an æsthetic
experience. And as, after all, that is the proper end of art his work
is treated with respect by all the best painters and most understanding
critics, though it has not yet scored a popular success. "Kisling ne
triche pas," says André Salmon.

The war did not kill the movement: none but a fool could have supposed