*

Democratic art! Art is the direct antithesis to democracy.... Athens! a few
thousand citizens who owned many thousand slaves, call that democracy! No!
what I am speaking of is modern democracy--the mass. The mass can only
appreciate simple and _naive_ emotions, puerile prettiness, above all
conventionalities. See the Americans that come over here; what do they
admire? Is it Degas or Manet they admire? No, Bouguereau and Lefevre. What
was most admired at the International Exhibition?--The Dirty Boy. And if
the medal of honour had been decided by a _plebiscite_, the dirty boy
would have had an overwhelming majority. What is the literature of the
people? The idiotic stories of the _Petit Journal_. Don't talk of
Shakespeare, Moliere, and the masters; they are accepted on the authority
of the centuries. If the people could understand _Hamlet_, the people
would not read the _Petit Journal_; if the people could understand
Michel Angelo, they would not look at our Bouguereau or your Bouguereau,
Sir F. Leighton. For the last hundred years we have been going rapidly
towards democracy, and what is the result? The destruction of the
handicrafts. That there are still good pictures painted and good poems
written proves nothing, there will always be found men to sacrifice their
lives for a picture or a poem. But the decorative arts which are executed
in collaboration, and depend for support on the general taste of a large
number, have ceased to exist. Explain that if you can. I'll give you five
thousand, ten thousand francs to buy a beautiful clock that is not a copy
and is not ancient, and you can't do it. Such a thing does not exist. Look
here; I was going up the staircase of the Louvre the other day. They were
putting up a mosaic; it was horrible; every one knows it is horrible. Well,
I asked who had given the order for this mosaic, and I could not find out;
no one knew. An order is passed from bureau to bureau, and no one is
responsible; and it will be always so in a republic, and the more
republican you are the worse it will be.

* * * * *

The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the
plague that will sweep away and destroy civilisation; man will have to rise
against it sooner or later.... Capital, unpaid labour, wage-slaves, and all
the rest--stuff.... Look at these plates; they were painted by machinery;
they are abominable. Look at them. In old times plates were pai