When in the course of this pamphlet I speak of the “Movement in painting,” or “Modern Painting,” I mean all that is included by the practice of such diverse painters as, for instance, Dérain, Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, or Survage. These painters represent one æsthetic current in the sense that they are none of them Impressionists, have all one synthetic intention or another, and are all related roughly in time and in enterprise. The complete non-representative character of Kandinsky’s painting, or the weightiness and palpable logic of the Cézanne-evolved Cubist, is really a portion of the same effort as that made by Dérain or Matisse, who are neither Cubist nor Abstract. Survage’s mixed phantasy is the same. There are bound to be within this great general movement many experiments and enterprises attempting to attract all the bulk of it in one direction or another. One of the most powerful of these and one that has held the stage for the last few years, is the Nature-morte development of a group of Cubist painters, Picasso, Braque, and Gris being three of the best known among them. Entertaining as some of these things are, I can see nothing of permanent interest deriving from them. Meantime, this exercise pursued for so long by these painters appears to me to denote a bad weak spot in the quarters where it saw the light. Again, Picasso, great artist as he is, and much as I admire him, looks to me rather equivocal and unsatisfactory in the light of present events. I devote considerable space to an adverse analysis of this aspect of the general movement. But it is because I believe so much in the wider movement, and because the spirit of this Nature-mortism--also the David-Raphael eclectic classic wave--contradicts what I have written this pamphlet to propose, that I deal with it so thoroughly. One other point in this preamble. I have no fault to find with Cézannism. Any faithful discipleship of that master is sure to be sound art. All the same, Cézanne is such a lonely figure, and he has such a weight of pups around him! No one man, even a Cézanne, should have on his shoulders such a huge effort of initiation as his was. There should have been several men. Ungrateful as it seems, one must say that it is a misfortune that all the diversity of art and human talent of a generation should have depended on this one old man, as has been the case, since he was unearthed. PART I _The Caliph’s Design_ _Section_ 1. _The Parable of the Caliph’s Design._ ” 2. _The Bull Sounds._ ” 3. _The Politician’s Apathy._ ” 4. _How the Fact of Style Obstructs._ ” 5. _Where the Painter would Benefit._ ” 6. _The Public Chosen._ ” 7. _Architecture._ ” 8. _Child Art and the Naif._ ” 9. _Machinery and Lions._ ” 10. _The Artist’s Luck._ _The Parable of the Caliph’s Design_