Contemporary Movement, has a future; but when that future is present
Cézanne and Matisse will no longer be called Post-Impressionists. They
will certainly be called great artists, just as Giotto and Masaccio are
called great artists; they will be called the masters of a movement; but
whether that movement is destined to be more than a movement, to be
something as vast as the slope that lies between Cézanne and the masters
of S. Vitale, is a matter of much less certainty than enthusiasts care
to suppose.

Post-Impressionism is accused of being a negative and destructive creed.
In art no creed is healthy that is anything else. You cannot give men
genius; you can only give them freedom--freedom from superstition.
Post-Impressionism can no more make good artists than good laws can make
good men. Doubtless, with its increasing popularity, an annually
increasing horde of nincompoops will employ the so-called
"Post-Impressionist technique" for presenting insignificant patterns and
recounting foolish anecdotes. Their pictures will be dubbed
"Post-Impressionist," but only by gross injustice will they be excluded
from Burlington House. Post-Impressionism is no specific against human
folly and incompetence. All it can do for painters is to bring before
them the claims of art. To the man of genius and to the student of
talent it can say: "Don't waste your time and energy on things that
don't matter: concentrate on what does: concentrate on the creation of
significant form." Only thus can either give the best that is in him.
Formerly because both felt bound to strike a compromise between art and
what the public had been taught to expect, the work of one was
grievously disfigured, that of the other ruined. Tradition ordered the
painter to be photographer, acrobat, archaeologist and littérateur:
Post-Impressionism invites him to become an artist.