Now, there is only one word for this denial of all law, this
insurrection against all custom and tradition, this assertion of
individual license without discipline and without restraint; and that
word is "anarchy." And, as we know, theoretic anarchy, though it may not
always lead to actual violence, is a doctrine of destruction. It is so
in art, and these artistic anarchists are found proclaiming that the
public will never understand or accept their art while anything remains
of the art of the past, and demanding that therefore the art of the past
shall be destroyed. It is actual, physical destruction of pictures and
statues that they call for, and in Italy, that great treasury of the
world's art, has been raised the sinister cry: "Burn the museums!" They
have not yet taken to the torch, but if they were sincere they would do
it; for their doctrine calls for nothing less than the reduction of
mankind to a state of primitive savagery that it may begin again at the
beginning.

Fortunately, they are not sincere. There may be among them those who
honestly believe in that exaltation of the individual and that revolt
against all law which is the danger of our age. But, for the most part,
if they have broken from the fold and "like sheep have gone astray,"
they have shown a very sheep-like disposition to follow the bell-wether.
They are fond of quoting a saying of Gauguin's that "one must be either
a revolutionist or a plagiary"; but can any one tell these
revolutionists apart? Can any one distinguish among them such definite
and logically developed personalities as mark even schoolmen and
"plagiarists" like Meissonier and Gérôme? If any one of these men stood
alone, one might believe his eccentricities to be the mark of an extreme
individuality; one cannot believe it when one finds the same
eccentricities in twenty of them.