with ease, and what he does today is no sure indication of what he will attempt tomorrow. For the moment he seems absorbed in the _music of planes_, so to speak. Take, for instance, a still life wherein there seem to be a pipe, a wall, a musical instrument, a glass, something like a stairway, street signs, etc. These may or may not have been the objects the painter had before him, but whether they are or not it is quite clear that he was not content with dealing with superficial planes, that is, with the visible lines and surfaces of the objects, but he _lets the planes project and intersect_ very much as if the objects were semi-transparent. To state the matter in other words--by using only the essential lines of an object and treating the object as otherwise more or less transparent, one readily understands why the essential lines of all objects in _the rear show through_, and the result is a confused mass of planes with here and there more conspicuous surface indications such as the pipe, the signs, the glass, etc. In much of Picasso’s later work he suppresses all such surface indications, until only a few absolutely elemental lines remain. The result is a picture so scientific, so abstract, it appeals to but few and excites no emotion in anyone because it was not the result of emotion in the artist. In short, Picasso and a few followers have reached a degree of abstraction in the suppression of the real and the particular that their pictures represent about the same degree of emotion as the demonstration of a difficult geometrical proposition. Beyond the few lines they use there is the bare canvas; they have reached the limit and they must turn in their tracks. The reaction is bound to come, and come quickly. Meanwhile the Cubists, who have been painting along emotional, as distinguished from the coldly scientific lines, are still turning out pictures that possess a charm in line and color irrespective of their theoretical significance and much may still be done in this direction. * * * * * The Cubists are fond of quoting the following from Plato: Socrates: What I am saying is not, indeed, directly obvious. I must therefore try to make it clear. For I will endeavor to speak of the beauty of figures, not as the majority of persons understand them such as those of animals, and some paintings to the life; but as reason says, I allude to something straight and round, and the figures formed from them by the turner’s lathe, both superficial and solid and those by the plumb-line and the angle-rule, if you understand me. For these, I say, are not beautiful for a particular purpose, as other things are; but are by nature ever beautiful by themselves, and possess certain peculiar pleasures, not at all similar to those from scratching; and colors possessing this character are beautiful and have similar pleasures.--From “Philebus.”