llard,
Mr. J.W. Morrice. I should be as unwilling to omit these names from a
history of twentieth century art as to include them in a chapter devoted
to the contemporary movement.]

[Footnote 26: June 1913. _Ariadne in Naxos._ Is Strauss, our one
musician of genius, himself the pivot on which the wheel is beginning to
swing? Having drained the cup of Wagnerism and turned it upside down, is
he now going to school with Mozart?]

V

THE FUTURE

I. SOCIETY AND ART

II. ART AND SOCIETY

[Illustration: PICASSO]

I

SOCIETY AND ART

To bother much about anything but the present is, we all agree, beneath
the dignity of a healthy human animal. Yet how many of us can resist the
malsane pleasure of puzzling over the past and speculating about the
future? Once admit that the Contemporary Movement is something a little
out of the common, that it has the air of a beginning, and you will
catch yourself saying "Beginning of what?" instead of settling down
quietly to enjoy the rare spectacle of a renaissance. Art, we hope,
serious, alive, and independent is knocking at the door, and we are
impelled to ask "What will come of it?" This is the general question,
which, you will find, divides itself into two sufficiently precise
queries--"What will Society do with Art?" and "What will Art do with
Society?"

It is a mistake to suppose that because Society cannot affect Art
directly, it cannot affect it at all. Society can affect Art indirectly
because it can affect artists directly. Clearly, if the creation of
works of art were made a capital offence, the quantity, if not the
quality, of artistic output would be affected. Proposals less barbarous,
but far more terrible, are from time to time put forward by cultivated
state-projectors who would make of artists, not criminals, but
highly-paid officials. Though statesmanship can do no positive good to
art, it can avoid doing a great deal of harm: its power for ill is
considerable. The one good thing Society can do for the artist is to
leave him alone. Give him liberty. The more completely the artist is
freed from the pressure of public taste and opinion, from the hope of
rewards and the menace of morals, from the fear of absolute starvation
or punishment, and from the prospect of wealth or popular consideration,
the better for him and the better for art, and therefore the better for
everyone. Liberate the artist: here is something t