Is he American? That question has been answered. He is, even if he deals with foreign subject-matter. Wonderfully wrought, magically coloured, rich and dim, are his pictures, and one, to employ the phrase of an English critic, is fain to believe that his brush was dipped in mist, not pigment. Let us be catholic. Let us try to shift anew the focus of criticism when a fresh personality swims into our ken. Let us study each man according to his temperament and not insist that he should chime with other men's music. The Beckmesser style of awarding good and bad marks is obsolete. To miss modern art is to miss one of the few thrills that life holds. Your true decadent copies the past and closes his eyes to the insistent vibrations of his day. I know that it is not every one who can enjoy Botticelli and Monet, Duerer and Manet, Rembrandt and Matisse. Ready-made admiration is fatal to youthful minds; nevertheless, we should, all of us, old as well as young--particularly the academic elderly--cultivate a broader comprehension of the later schools and personalities. Art is protean. But will, I ask myself, posterity sit before the masterpieces of Matisse, Picasso, and Van Dongen, and experience that nostalgia of the ideal of which I wrote at the beginning of these desultory notes? Why not? There may be other ideals in those remote times, ideals that may be found incarnate in some new-fangled tremendous Gehenna. But nature will always remain modern. II THE ITALIAN FUTURIST PAINTERS