y case.
Before the bagman with his Brummagem goods an art of this sort was bound
to go the way that in Europe our applied arts, the art of the potter,
the weaver, the builder and the joiner, the arts that in some sort
resembled it, have gone. No purely instinctive art can stand against the
machine. And thus it comes about that, at the present moment, we have
in Europe the extraordinary spectacle of a grand efflorescence of the
highly self-conscious, self-critical, intellectual, individualistic art
of painting amongst the ruins of the instinctive, uncritical, communal,
and easily impressed arts of utility. Industrialism, which, with its
vulgar finish and superabundant ornament, has destroyed not only popular
art but popular taste, has merely isolated the self-conscious artist and
the critical appreciator; and the nineteenth century (from Stephenson to
Mr. Ford), which ruined the crafts, in painting (from Ingres to Picasso)
rivals the fifteenth.

Meanwhile, the scholarly activities of dealers and journalists
notwithstanding, there is no such thing as nigger archaeology; for which
let us be thankful. Here, at any rate, are no great names to scare us
into dishonest admiration. Here is no question of dates and schools to
give the lecturer his chance of spoiling our pleasure. Here is nothing
to distract our attention from the one thing that matters--aesthetic
significance. Here is nigger sculpture: you may like it or dislike it,
but at any rate you have no inducement to judge it on anything but its
merits.

ORDER AND AUTHORITY

I

M. Andre Lhote is not only a first-rate painter, he is a capable writer
as well; so when, some weeks ago, he began to tell us what was wrong
with modern art, and how to put it right, naturally we pricked up our
ears. We were not disappointed. M. Lhote had several good things to
say, and he said them clearly; the thing, however, which he said most
emphatically of all was that he, Andre Lhote, besides being a painter
and a writer, is a Frenchman. He has a natural taste for order and a
superstitious belief in authority. That is why he recommends to
the reverent study of the young of all nations, David--David the
Schoolmaster! _Merci_, we have our own Professor Tonks.

Not that I would compare David, who was a first-rate practitioner and
something of an artist, with the great Agrippa of the Slade. But from
David even we have little or nothing to learn. For one thing, art cannot
be taught; for