es of the confessedly untutored critic. The artist
will gain its confidence by reason of his own sincerity and
intelligence. It is probable, too, that in time criticism in the mode
of Ruskin will utterly disappear and the Meier-Graefe type of critic
will have found a fitter and true successor, someone who, when he
calls himself a critic, will prove a fairly clear title to the
distinction and will not have to apologize for himself or for his
occupation.

AFTERWORD

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING "DADA"

We are indebted to Tristan Tzara and his followers for the newest and
perhaps the most important doctrinary insistence as applied to art
which has appeared in a long time. Dada-ism is the latest phase of
modernism in painting as well as in literature, and carries with it
all the passion for freedom of expression which Marinetti sponsored so
loudly in his futuristic manifestoes. It adds likewise an exhilarating
quality of nihilism, imbibed, as is said, directly from the author of
Zarathustra. Reading a fragment of the documentary statement of
Dada-ism, we find that the charm of the idea exists mainly in the fact
that they wish all things levelled in the mind of man to the degree of
commonplaceness which is typical of and peculiar to it.

Nothing is greater than anything else, is what the Dada believes, and
this is the first sign of hope the artist at least can discover in the
meaningless importance which has been invested in the term ART. It
shows best of all that art is to betake itself on its own way blandly,
despite the wish of its so ardent supporters and suppressors. I am
greatly relieved as artist, to find there is at least one tenet I can
hold to in my experience as a useful or a useless human being. I have
always said for myself, I have no office, no obligations, no other
"mission", dread-fullest of all words, than to find out the quality of
humor that exists in experience, or life as we think we are entitled
to call it. I have always felt the underlying fatality of habit in
appreciation, because I have felt, and now actually more than ever in
my existence, the fatality of habit indulged in by the artist. The
artist has made a kind of subtle crime of his habitual expression, his
emotional monotonies, and his intellectual inabilities.

If I announce on this bright morning that I am a "Dada-ist" it is not
because I find the slightest need for, or importance in, a doctrine of
any sort, it is only for conv