. Nor is there any such thing as a school of art even.
There are merely artists, that is all.

And as regards histories of art, they are quite valueless to you unless
you are seeking the ostentatious oblivion of an art professorship. It is
of no use to you to know the date of Perugino or the birthplace of
Salvator Rosa: all that you should learn about art is to know a good
picture when you see it, and a bad picture when you see it. As regards
the date of the artist, all good work looks perfectly modern: a piece of
Greek sculpture, a portrait of Velasquez--they are always modern, always
of our time. And as regards the nationality of the artist, art is not
national but universal. As regards archaeology, then, avoid it
altogether: archaeology is merely the science of making excuses for bad
art; it is the rock on which many a young artist founders and shipwrecks;
it is the abyss from which no artist, old or young, ever returns. Or, if
he does return, he is so covered with the dust of ages and the mildew of
time, that he is quite unrecognisable as an artist, and has to conceal
himself for the rest of his days under the cap of a professor, or as a
mere illustrator of ancient history. How worthless archaeology is in art
you can estimate by the fact of its being so popular. Popularity is the
crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is
wrong.

As I am not going to talk to you, then, about the philosophy of the
beautiful, or the history of art, you will ask me what I am going to talk
about. The subject of my lecture to-night is what makes an artist and
what does the artist make; what are the relations of the artist to his
surroundings, what is the education the artist should get, and what is
the quality of a good work of art.

Now, as regards the relations of the artist to his surroundings, by which
I mean the age and country in which he is born. All good art, as I said
before, has nothing to do with any particular century; but this
universality is the quality of the work of art; the conditions that
produce that quality are different. And what, I think, you should do is
to realise completely your age in order completely to abstract yourself
from it; remembering that if you are an artist at all, you will be not
the mouthpiece of a century, but the master of eternity; that all art
rests on a principle, and that mere temporal considerations are no
principle at all; and that those who advise