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TRADITION & MOVEMENTS

Much to its embarrassment, the National Gallery finds itself possessed
of that superb picture _Les Parapluies_; and as the director at last
feels obliged to exhume those masterpieces which, for so many happy
months, he and his colleagues have had, albeit in the dark, to
themselves, we can now see Renoir amongst his peers. He is perfectly at
home there. Renoir takes his place quite simply in the great tradition;
and when Cezanne, who is still too cheap to be within the reach of a
national collection, has attained a price that guarantees respectability
he, too, will be seen to fit neatly into that tradition of which he is
as much a part as Ingres or Poussin, Raphael or Piero della Francesca.

That Cezanne was a master, just as Poussin and Piero were, and that he,
like them, is part of the tradition, is what all sensitive people know
and the wiser keep to themselves. For by stating the plain fact that
Renoir, Cezanne, and, for that matter, Matisse are all in the great
tradition of painting one seems to suggest that the tradition is
something altogether different from what most people would wish it
to be. If one is right it follows that it is not simply the
counter-movement to the contemporary movement; indeed, it follows that
it is not a movement at all. This is intolerable. An artist, seen as the
protagonist of a movement, the exponent of a theory, and the clue to an
age, has a certain interest for all active-minded people; whereas, seen
merely as an artist, which is how he must be seen if he is to be seen
in the tradition, he is of interest only to those who care for art.
The significant characteristics of an artist, considered as the
representative of a movement, are those in which he differs most
from other artists; set him in the traditions and his one important
characteristic is the one he shares with all--his being an artist.
In the tradition a work of art loses its value as a means. We must
contemplate it as an end--as a direct means to aesthetic emotion
rather--or let it be. Tradition, in fact, has to do with art alone;
while with movements can be mixed up history, archaeology, philosophy,
politics, geography, fashions, religion, and crime. So, by insisting on
the fact that Matisse, Cezanne, Poussin, Piero, and Giotto are all in
the tradition we insist on the fact that they are all artists. We rob
them of their amusing but adscititious qualities; we make them utterly
uninteresti