to give much else. Detail is the heart of
realism, and the fatty degeneration of art. The tendency of the movement
is to simplify away all this mess of detail which painters have
introduced into pictures in order to state facts. But more than this was
needed. There were irrelevancies introduced into pictures for other
purposes than that of statement. There were the irrelevancies of
technical swagger. Since the twelfth century there has been a steady
elaboration of technical complexities. Writers with nothing to say soon
come to regard the manipulation of words as an end in itself. So cooks
without eggs might come to regard the ritual of omelette-making, the
mixing of condiments, the chopping of herbs, the stoking of fires, and
the shaping of white caps, as a fine art. As for the eggs,--why that's
God business: and who wants omelettes when he can have cooking? The
movement has simplified the _batterie de cuisine_. Nothing is to be left
in a work of art which merely shows that the craftsman knows how to put
it there.

Alas! It generally turns out that Life and Art are rather more
complicated than we could wish; to understand exactly what is meant by
simplification we must go deeper into the mysteries. It is easy to say
eliminate irrelevant details. What details are not irrelevant? In a work
of art nothing is relevant but what contributes to formal significance.
Therefore all informatory matter is irrelevant and should be eliminated.
But what most painters have to express can only be expressed in designs
so complex and subtle that without some clue they would be almost
unintelligible. For instance, there are many designs that can only be
grasped by a spectator who looks at them from a particular point of
view. Not every picture is as good seen upside down as upside up. To be
sure, very sensitive people can always discover from the design itself
how it should be viewed, and, without much difficulty, will place
correctly a piece of lace or embroidery in which there is no informatory
clue to guide them. Nevertheless, when an artist makes an intricate
design it is tempting and, indeed, reasonable, for him to wish to
provide a clue; and to do so he has only to work into his design some
familiar object, a tree or a figure, and the business is done. Having
established a number of extremely subtle relations between highly
complex forms, he may ask himself whether anyone else will be able to
appreciate them. Shall he not give a hi