Produced by David Clarke, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) ADVENTURES IN THE ARTS INFORMAL CHAPTERS ON PAINTERS VAUDEVILLE AND POETS BY MARSDEN HARTLEY BONI AND LIVERIGHT Publishers New York COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC. * * * * * PREFATORY NOTE The papers in this book are not intended in any way to be professional treatises. They must be viewed in the light of entertaining conversations. Their possible value lies in their directness of impulse, and not in weight of argument. I could not wish to go into the qualities of art more deeply. A reaction, to be pleasant, must be simple. This is the apology I have to offer: Reactions, then, through direct impulse, and not essays by means of stiffened analysis. MARSDEN HARTLEY. * * * * * Some of the papers included in this book have appeared in _Art and Archeology_, _The Seven Arts_, _The Dial_, _The Nation_, _The New Republic_, and _The Touchstone_. Thanks are due to the editors of these periodicals for permission to reprint. * * * * * TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ * * * * * INTRODUCTION TO ADVENTURES IN THE ARTS Perhaps the most important part of Criticism is the fact that it presents to the creator a problem which is never solved. Criticism is to him a perpetual Presence: or perhaps a ghost which he will not succeed in laying. If he could satisfy his mind that Criticism was a certain thing: a good thing or a bad, a proper presence or an irrelevant, he could psychologically dispose of it. But he can not. For Criticism is a configuration of responses and reactions so intricate, so kaleidoscopic, that it would be as simple to category Life itself.