Edith Bonilla motored me out there. The students work in a patio. Martinez’ idea is the open air, no false lights. He has talked to me too of his ambition that his students shall be _Mexican_, not cosmopolitan, nor French in their art. The idea is right. But when one has looked around: what _is_ Mexican Art? There is Toltec, Maya, Aztec art. There is Spanish (colonial) evidenced in architecture. But one looks in vain for evidences of modern Mexican Art. At the school some perfectly mediocre studies were being done by students who, by their years, should have been far beyond what they were doing. There were mature men painting the eternal still life groups of pots and oranges. There was the eternal model, an old woman sitting holding a bowl. Only the model in this instance was brown instead of white. I realized with overwhelming weariness the futility of schools.... I went to a school once. A night school. I was paralysed. I achieved nothing, I was the most unpromising pupil there. Moreover I hated it and dreaded it, and only went out of sheer self-discipline. This is at a time when I had quite a lot of commissions to work at in my own studio. I benefited in no way from the school, and I don’t believe anyone else does. At best it succeeds in turning out a mould, a type, a “school.” Only once in a million times does _one_ arise, who would have arisen anyway, anyhow, anywhere. Mr. Martinez, who has worked in Paris (why?) who has no more “the soul of Mexico,” or the depth to realise it, will work in vain, open air or indoor, unless he instils some spirit into those students! Always these masters point to a student’s work and with pride call it “du Gauguin”; easy enough to make a bad Gauguin. I wonder on whom it reflects most discredit: Gauguin or the student. If only the teacher would say, “My God! All this is _awful_, let’s have something new....” There was one sculptor at the Country School. His Christian name was Phidias, not his fault, and no one _could_ have foreseen. He looked white and on the verge of suicide. He said he had been working in Paris ... but that he had done nothing since. He had been back six months. He said there were no sculptors and no art appreciation in Mexico. He certainly could not, even if he would, have worked in the room into which he took me. It would be a perfectly fit room in which to hang oneself. He looked very depressed,--I fear he will starve. I came back, and went to the reception of the Pani’s. Like last time full of cosmopolitans, diplomats, from South America, such as Uruguay, Guatemala and the like, and also Mr. Malbran and Mr. Summerlin. There were heaps of women and girls, sitting in rows, and men grouped in doorways. That is the only unconventional part of the Pani parties, that the sexes do not engage one another in conversation. Maybe it is the habit of the country.