omit the thing that matters--what philosophers used to call "the thing
in itself," what now, I imagine, they call "the essential reality." For,
after all, what is a rose? What is a tree, a dog, a wall, a boat? What
is the particular significance of anything? Certainly the essence of a
boat is not that it conjures up visions of argosies with purple sails,
nor yet that it carries coals to Newcastle. Imagine a boat in complete
isolation, detach it from man and his urgent activities and fabulous
history, what is it that remains, what is that to which we still react
emotionally? What but pure form, and that which, lying behind pure form,
gives it its significance. It was for this Cezanne felt the emotion he
spent his life in expressing. And the second characteristic of the new
movement is a passionate interest, inherited from Cezanne, in things
regarded as ends in themselves. In saying this I am saying no more than
that the painters of the movement are consciously determined to be
artists. Peculiarity lies in the consciousness--the consciousness with
which they set themselves to eliminate all that lies between themselves
and the pure forms of things. To be an artist, they think, suffices.
How many men of talent, and even of genius, have missed being effective
artists because they tried to be something else?

II

SIMPLIFICATION AND DESIGN

At the risk of becoming a bore I repeat that there is something
ludicrous about hunting for characteristics in the art of to-day or of
yesterday, or of any particular period. In art the only important
distinction is the distinction between good art and bad. That this pot
was made in Mesopotamia about 4000 B.C., and that picture in Paris about
1913 A.D., is of very little consequence. Nevertheless, it is possible,
though not very profitable, to distinguish between equally good works
made at different times in different places; and although the practice
of associating art with the age in which it was produced can be of no
service to art or artists, I am not sure that it can be of no service
whatever. For if it be true that art is an index to the spiritual
condition of an age, the historical consideration of art cannot fail to
throw some light on the history of civilisation. It is conceivable
therefore that a comparative study of artistic periods might lead us to
modify our conception of human development, and to revise a few of our
social and political theories. Be that as it may,