ourgeoisie_, was no earthly good. The lecturer, as might have been
expected, was out even in his facts: for Renoir--who came from the
people, by the way--might, were he less of an artist, by means of the
taking and almost anecdotic quality of his earlier work, give some
pleasure to a working man; whereas Picasso--the son of middle-class
parents, too--could not possibly win from an honest labourer, left to
himself, anything but sarcastic laughter or ferocious abuse. But even if
true, the lecturer's facts would have been beside the point. To say
that a work is aristocratic or democratic, moral or immoral, is to say
something silly and irrelevant, or rather, silly if meant to be relevant
to its value as art. In the work of Renoir and of Picasso, in all works
of art for that matter, the essential quality, as every sensitive person
knows, is the same. Whatever it may be that makes art matter is to be
found in every work that does matter. And though, no doubt, "subject"
and to some extent "attack" may be conditioned by an artist's opinions
and attitude to life, such things are irrelevant to his work's final
significance. Strange as it may seem, the essential quality in a work of
art is purely artistic. It has nothing to do with the moral, religious,
or political views of its creator. It has to do solely with his aesthetic
experience and his power of expressing that. But, as no politician is
capable of appreciating, or even becoming aware of, this essential
quality, it is perhaps only natural that politicians should look
elsewhere for the significance of art.

This painful but certain fact once grasped, it becomes possible to
understand several things that have considerably puzzled critics and
historians. For instance, it is often remarked, and generally with
surprise, that progressive politicians are commonly averse to new
movements in art. The attitude of the present Russian Government to the
contemporary movement makes neither for nor against this view, for that
novelty it took over as a going concern. Let us see how it looks on the
next, which will be very likely a return to the tradition of Ingres.
The example usually cited by exponents of this theory--that progressive
politicians are reactionary in art--is the notorious hostility of
Liberals to the romantic movement; but I believe that were they to study
closely the histories of the Impressionist, the Pre-Raphaelite, and the
Wagnerian movements they would find in them, to