relief from the popular notion, and we must relieve ourselves
from his excessive popularity if we are to enjoy him rightly, by being
just with him. A little time, and we should have learned his real
distinction. It is too soon for us, and too late for him. We must
accept him more for his finer indications then, and less for his
achievement in the sense of mastery.

THE DEARTH OF CRITICS

There is just cause for wonder at the noticeable absence of critics in
the field of painting, of individuals who are capable of some serious
approach to the current tendencies in art. We have witnessed a very
general failure to rise above the common or high-class reportorial
level in this particular sphere. Why do so many people who write
specifically about painting say so little that really relates to it?
It is because most of them are journalists or men of letters who have
made emotional excursions into this field, which is in most instances
foreign to them; well-known literary artists, occasionally, intent
upon varying their subject matter.

We read Meier-Graefe, for instance, on the development of modern art,
and we find his analogies more or less stimulating, but taken as a
whole his work is unsatisfactory from an artist's point of view; not
much more than a sort of novel with art for its skeleton, or rather a
handbook from which the untutored layman can gather superficial
information about group and individual influences, a kind of verbal
entertainment that is altogether wanting in true critical values. I
have listened to lectures on art by people who were supposed to know
about it, merely to see how much this type of critical study could
satisfy the really artistic mind somewhat conversant with true
relations, and I have found these lectures of but the slightest value,
_resumes_ compounded of wearisome and inappropriate detail. There is
always an extreme lack of true definition, of true information, there
is always too much of the amateur spirit passing for popular knowledge
among these individuals who might otherwise do so much to form public
taste and appreciation. Thus we find that even the chatty Meier-Graefe
stops without going any further than Cezanne. It is possible that
after writing two very heavy volumes upon the development of modern
art, he has to remain silent on modern art itself, that he really
feels he is not qualified to speak upon Cezanne and his successors; or
does he assume possibly that there is no