was really killed by the invention of
photography. It was impossible for the most insensate not to see that in
a work of art, of sculpture or painting, there was an element of value
not to be found in the exact transcript of a photograph. Henceforth the
Imitation theory lived on only in the weakened form of Idealization.

The reaction against the Imitation theory has naturally and inevitably
gone much too far. We have "thrown out the child with the bath-water."
All through the present book we have tried to show that art _arises
from_ ritual, and ritual is in its essence a faded action, an
imitation. Moreover, every work of art _is_ a copy of something, only
not a copy of anything having actual existence in the outside world.
Rather it is a copy of that inner and highly emotionalized vision of the
artist which it is granted to him to see and recreate when he is
released from certain practical reactions.

* * * * *

The Impressionism that dominated the pictorial art of the later years of
the nineteenth century was largely a modified and very delicate
imitation. Breaking with conventions as to how things are _supposed to
be_--conventions mainly based not on seeing but on knowing or
imagining--the Impressionist insists on purging his vision from
knowledge, and representing things not as they are but as they really
_look_. He imitates Nature not as a whole, but as she presents herself
to his eyes. It was a most needful and valuable purgation, since
painting is the art proper of the eye. But, when the new effects of the
world as simply _seen_, the new material of light and shadow and tone,
had been to some extent--never completely--mastered, there was
inevitable reaction. Up sprang Post-Impressionists and Futurists. They
will not gladly be classed together, but both have this in common--they
are Expressionists, not Impressionists, not Imitators.

The Expressionists, no matter by what name they call themselves, have
one criterion. They believe that art is not the copying or idealizing of
Nature, or of any aspect of Nature, but the expression and communication
of the artist's emotion. We can see that, between them and the
Imitationists, the Impressionists form a delicate bridge. They, too,
focus their attention on the artist rather than the object, only it is
on the artist's particular _vision_, his impression, what he actually
sees, not on his emotion, what he feels.

Modern life is _not_ si