* * * * * Of all the Cubist pictures exhibited, most people liked “The Man on the Balcony” best. Why? Because it looked like a good painting of a man in armour. “I like the ‘Man in Armour,’” was an expression frequently heard. All of which goes to show that appreciation is largely a matter of association rather than of knowledge and taste. Tell the people it is not a man in armour, and immediately they ask, in a tone of disgust, “Then what is he?” and the picture they liked a moment before becomes ridiculous in their eyes. [Illustration: GLEIZES Original drawing for “Man on Balcony”] The original design is an almost academic freehand drawing of a man--artist or workman--leaning against the railing of a balcony, with roofs of the city at his back. Barring the square treatment of hand and foot, there is little to suggest Cubism. The drawing is uninteresting, the painting is uninteresting. By blocking out details, emphasizing planes, and laying stress on masses, the artist made his painting incomparably more dignified and stronger than his design. If he had painted an academic picture, following the lines of his original sketch, the painting probably would have been quite commonplace. * * * * * The “Chess Players” gives one a singular impression of human absorption in a game; it is elemental and impersonal. Behind the two players are onlookers, equally intent. One player is resting his chin upon his hand, the other holds a piece apparently making a move. The artist has arbitrarily placed the men and board close to the eye of the player making the move. While most people might prefer lifelike portraits of two men playing chess, is it not true that this curious reduction of the players to elemental planes and masses gives a very vivid impression of intense absorption, and also a strange feeling of the elemental? A sculptor admired this picture greatly. * * * * * Two figures were the basis of the “King and the Queen,” the king at the right, and the queen at the left; but in the finished picture these two figures were reduced to planes, and appear as the two upright conical or cubical masses that are so evident, and a philosophical significance was attributed to the scheme, namely, a representation of the static and dynamic forms of life; the static being represented in the upright masses, the king and queen--dynastic, permanent--while the dynamic forces are represented in the stream of cubical forms that flow in different directions about the two more permanent masses. On its technical side, Cubism is simply a systematic use of planes. * * * * * The power of lines is a manifestation of the new mode of representation.