legitimately draw from another. So nourished, he seems to have made a
fresh start; at any rate his work has now a freshness and vivacity which
in his younger days he could never impart. The case of Guérin is odder
still. A passionate admirer of Watteau, he would seem to have locked
himself up in a rather sterile devotion to the eighteenth century
master. One must suppose that there was something dead in his
appreciation, something recognized but unfelt, and therefore not really
understood. This deadness came through into his work. Lacking genuine
inspiration, struggling in consequence to impart life by tricks and
conventions, he occasionally allowed himself to tumble into downright
vulgarity. Suddenly, and without renouncing any ancient loyalty, he has
come to life. It is Watteau that inspires him still; but the essential
Watteau--Watteau the painter--not that superficies which is more or
less familiar to every hack, be he limner or penman, who dabbles in the
eighteenth century. How amusing to fancy that the just admiration now
felt for the genius of Watteau by those descendants of Cézanne who
formerly misesteemed it has somehow put Guérin himself in the way of
becoming intimate with an art he had formerly worshipped at a distance!

Though the war did not kill or even cripple the movement, since the war
there has been a change, or, at any rate, a change has become apparent.
To begin with, Picasso has, in a sense, retired from public life--from
the life of the _cafés_ and studios I mean--and in isolation works out
those problems that are for ever presenting themselves to his restless
brain. The splendid fruit of his solitude we saw last summer _chez_ Paul
Rosenberg. From time to time Picasso still paints a Cubist picture--to
keep his mind in--but he is hardly to be reckoned a Cubist, and
certainly not a pure one. Of that school, which still flourishes
(exhibiting at _la Section d'Or_ or rue de la Baume the work of Braque,
Gleizes, Léger, Metzinger, Gris, Laurens, Lipsitz, Marcoussis, Henry