Most Cubist pictures are plainly the work of men who are profoundly moved by an idea and who are striving to express that idea in a highly original manner. It may be the manner they have chosen is so abstract, so scientifically theoretical, that it will in the end--if pursued--kill the imagination, stifle all delight, and so result in failure as _art expression_; but so long as the men take sincere delight in both what they are trying to say and their manner of utterance, it is impossible to deny the character of art to their works. In proportion to their originality and daring, there may be more of living and vital art in what they are doing than in the art of the academic painter who follows in the footsteps of others without any particular effort. In other words, it is quite conceivable there may be more of vital and living art in a movement doomed to failure than in a movement that has achieved success and become stagnant. _The vitality lies in the element of earnest striving rather than in the direction the striving takes._ VI THE THEORY OF CUBISM The art that is at hand is a highly _subjective_ art as distinguished from the highly _objective_ art of the Impressionist and Realist, but no man can say just what forms this new art will assume. Cubism is one attempt, Futurism is another, Compositional painting is another; there will be many more attempts before freedom of expression is attained. Cubism is interesting because it accentuates the value of planes and shows what can be done with elemental propositions in drawing. But the student or painter who turns to Cubism because he thinks it is to become a fad and will pay, runs the risk of making a great mistake; he would better stick to older methods. * * * * * The Orphists have been mentioned; there were no Orphist pictures in the International Exhibition. The movement is based on the purely practical proposition that color in itself, and color alone without drawing, may be beautiful. So they just place lines and masses of color on a canvas and frame the canvas. It sounds absurd, yet the theory is the very foundation of wall decoration, of interior furnishing, of dressmaking--the mere juxtaposition of masses of color, with or without pattern. The Orphist “picture” may not be much of a picture in the accepted sense of the term, but it may afford pleasure as a color combination and may be of very real value to the decorator, the furnisher, the dressmaker, the scene-painter, the costumer. The theory is not new. So long as man has loved color he has used it irrespective of pattern. One part of the theory of the Cubists is as old as that of the Orphists. It is simply that the painter can do with line and color what the composer does with sound. In other words they demand the same freedom in the use of line and color that every great composer has in the use of sound.