simple,--the vast majority of those who paint pictures have neither
originality nor any considerable talent. Left to themselves they would
probably produce the kind of painful absurdity which in England is known
as an "Academy picture." But a student who has no original gift may yet
be anything but a fool, and many students understand that the ordinary
cultivated picture-goer knows an "Academy picture" at a glance and knows
that it is bad. Is it fair to condemn severely a young painter for
trying to give his picture a factitious interest, or even for trying to
conceal beneath striking wrappers the essential mediocrity of his wares?
If not heroically sincere he is surely not inhumanly base. Besides, he
has to imitate someone, and he likes to be in the fashion. And, after
all, a bad cubist picture is no worse than any other bad picture. If
anyone is to be blamed, it should be the spectator who cannot
distinguish between good cubist pictures and bad. Blame alike the fools
who think that because a picture is cubist it must be worthless, and
their idiotic enemies who think it must be marvellous. People of
sensibility can see that there is as much difference between Picasso and
a Montmartre sensationalist as there is between Ingres and the President
of the Royal Academy.]




II

ART AND LIFE


I. ART AND RELIGION