I do not grumble at the reappearance of Wyndham Lewis's _Kermesse_, which has been altered and greatly improved since its last appearance at the London Salon. Lewis promises to become that rare thing, a real academic artist. He is academic in the good sense of the word--that is to say, he uses a formula of which he is the master and not the slave. He uses it as a means to vast organizations of form, designed, I imagine, to have something of the austere and impressive unity of great architecture. He succeeds to a surprising degree. The enemy that dogs him in all his works is an excessive taste for life. He is inclined to modify his forms in the interest of drama and psychology, to the detriment of pure design. At times his simplifications and rhythms seem to be determined by a literary rather than a plastic conception. Probably this is not the kind of criticism which by now Wyndham Lewis must have learnt to disregard. He is more accustomed, I suspect, to hearing his work called "mechanical" and "lifeless," and, in a sense, it is both. That is the price an artist must pay who sets himself to achieve the end that Lewis has in view. He who is working by formula towards the realization of a minutely definite intellectual plan must be willing, on occasions, to sacrifice the really valuable qualities of sensibility and handwriting as well as the adventitious charms that spring from happy flukes. Besides, I am not sure that Lewis has been blest with uncommon sensibility. The peculiar merits of _Kermesse_ will become obvious to any one who, after contemplating that picture, turns sharp round and glances at the big canvas by Delaunay. Delaunay, according to Mr. Rutter, is "the protagonist" of what is known in Paris as "Orfeism"; his picture, _The Cardiff Football Team_, is what used to be known in Paris as _tres artiste_. It is well made, but it is not made to wear. It is not what Cezanne would have called "quelque chose de solide et de durable comme l'art des musees." It is a brighter, gayer, more attractive thing than _Kermesse_, but in construction it is less subtle and less solid: by comparison, it looks like a poster, and a poster, I believe, is what it is.