Call this man an extremist if you like, but do not lightly dub him insincere and charlatan. He is the counterpart in art of the extremist in politics, the man who has no patience with palliative measures, who demands the whole loaf and nothing but the loaf, who kicks savagely away the fragments of bread tendered him by the moderate and respectable. A dangerous man he may be, but he is no trifler; and, if he succeeds in his purpose, as extremists sometimes do, the whipped world at his feet hails him as reformer and benefactor of humanity.[2] * * * * * The Columbian Exposition gave American art a tremendous impetus forward, but of late it has been getting a little smug; the International Exhibition came and gave our complacency a severe jolt. The net result is that American art has received another impulse forward; it will do bigger and finer and saner things. It will not copy the eccentricities, the exaggerations, the morbid enthusiasms of the recent exhibition, because America as yet is not given to eccentricities and morbidness--though it may be to a youthful habit of exaggeration. America is essentially sane and healthful--say quite practical--in its outlook, hence it will absorb all that is good in the extreme modern movement and reject what is bad. Neither our students nor our painters will be carried off their feet but they will be helped onward. They will be helped in their technic, and they will see things from new angles, they will be more independent, in short they will be better and bigger painters. They will not be Cubists, Orphists, or Futurists, but they will absorb all there is of good in Cubism, Orphism, Futurism--and other “isms;” and bear in mind it is the _ist_ who is always blazing a trail somewhere; he may lose himself in the dense undergrowth of his theories but he at least marks a path others have not trodden. The recent exhibition was not an isolated movement. There are no _isolated_ movements in life. The International Exhibition was just as inevitable as the Progressive political convention of 1912 in Chicago. The world is filled with ferment--ferment of new ideas, ferment of originality and individuality, of assertion of independence. This is true in religion, science, politics as well as in art. It is true in business. _New thought_ is everywhere. The most radical suggestions are debated at the dinner table. In politics what would have been considered socialistic twenty years ago is accepted today as reasonable. To the conservative masses these new departures may seem like a wild overturning of all that is sacred, but there is no need for fear; all that _is really sound_ will gain in the end. * * * * * Neither Cubism, Futurism nor any other “ism” troubles the really great painter; it is the little fellow who fumes and swears.