* * * * * The first exhibition of Futurist paintings in London was at the Sackville Gallery in March, 1912. The painters printed by way of preface to the little catalogue a statement of their beliefs and aims. From this statement the following paragraphs are taken: “We are young and our art is violently revolutionary.” Speaking of the Cubists and Post-Impressionists generally: “While we admire the heroism of these painters of great worth, who have displayed a laudable contempt for artistic commercialism and a powerful hatred of academism, we feel ourselves and we declare ourselves to be absolutely opposed to their art. “They obstinately continue to paint objects motionless, frozen, and all the static aspects of nature; they worship the traditionalism of Poussin, of Ingres, of Corot, ageing and petrifying their art with an obstinate attachment to the past, which to our eyes remains totally incomprehensible. “We, on the contrary, with points of view pertaining essentially to the future, seek for a style of motion, a thing which has never been attempted before us. “All the truths learnt in the schools or in the studios are abolished for us. Our hands are free enough and pure enough to start everything afresh. “It is indisputable that several of the aesthetic declarations of our French comrades display a sort of masked academism. “Is it not, indeed, a return to the Academy to declare that the subject, in painting, is of perfectly insignificant value? “We declare, on the contrary, that there can be no modern painting without the starting point of an absolutely modern sensation, and none can contradict us when we state that _painting_ and _sensation_ are two inseparable words. “If our pictures are futurist, it is because they are the result of absolutely futurist conceptions, ethical, aesthetic, political, and social. “To paint from the posing model is an absurdity, and an act of mental cowardice, even if the model be translated upon the picture in linear, spherical, or cubic forms. “To lend an allegorical significance to an ordinary nude figure, deriving the meaning of the picture from the objects held by the model or from those which are arranged about him, is to our mind the evidence of a traditional and academic mentality. “While we repudiate impressionism, we emphatically condemn the present reaction which, in order to kill impressionism, brings back painting to old academic forms. “It is only possible to react against impressionism by surpassing it. “Nothing is more absurd than to fight it by adopting the pictural laws which preceded it. “The points of contact which the quest of style may have with the so-called _classic art_ do not concern us. “Others will seek, and will, no doubt, discover, these analogies which in any case cannot be looked upon as a return to methods, conceptions, and values transmitted by classical painting. “A few examples will illustrate our theory.