We read Meier-Graefe, for instance, on the development of modern art, and we find his analogies more or less stimulating, but taken as a whole his work is unsatisfactory from an artist's point of view; not much more than a sort of novel with art for its skeleton, or rather a handbook from which the untutored layman can gather superficial information about group and individual influences, a kind of verbal entertainment that is altogether wanting in true critical values. I have listened to lectures on art by people who were supposed to know about it, merely to see how much this type of critical study could satisfy the really artistic mind somewhat conversant with true relations, and I have found these lectures of but the slightest value, _resumes_ compounded of wearisome and inappropriate detail. There is always an extreme lack of true definition, of true information, there is always too much of the amateur spirit passing for popular knowledge among these individuals who might otherwise do so much to form public taste and appreciation. Thus we find that even the chatty Meier-Graefe stops without going any further than Cezanne. It is possible that after writing two very heavy volumes upon the development of modern art, he has to remain silent on modern art itself, that he really feels he is not qualified to speak upon Cezanne and his successors; or does he assume possibly that there is nothing this side of Cezanne? How many writer people are there who really do understand what has taken place since then? I have heard these characteristic remarks among the so-called art writers who write the regular notices for the daily journals--"You see I really don't know anything about the subject, but I have to write!" or--"I don't know anything about art, but I am reading up on it as much as possible so that I won't appear too stupid; for they send me out and I have to write something." Their attitude is the same as if their subject were a fire or a murder: but either of the latter would be much more in their line, calling for nothing but a registration of the simplest of facts. Just why these people have to write upon art will never be clear. But because of this altogether trivial relationship to the theme of painting we find it difficult to take seriously at all what we read in our dailies, in every case the barest notation with heavily worded comment, having little or no reference to what is important in the particular pictures themselves. How can anyone take these individuals seriously when they actually have no opinion to offer, and must rely either upon humor or indignation to inspire them?