First, this is not a review of painting in Europe. It is primarily an indication of what I consider is the only line that the painting of to-day can take if it is to justify itself, and not fizzle out in a fireworks of ingenious pseudo-scientific stunts, and ringing of stylistic changes on this mode and that. And the extra-studio preoccupations, the effort towards construction that I recommend, conflict with the spirit that appears to be guiding the cubist movement in Paris. The emotional impulse of the latest phases of that movement looks to me contradictory to any creative impulse in painting. And more clearly, it seems to preclude the development of any sensibility but that of an exasperated egotism. The eye becomes a little gluttonous instrument of enjoyment; or watches from the centre of its brain web for more flies and yet more flies. It would eventually become as mechanical and stupid as a spider, if it is not so already. An effete and hysterical mechanism certainly threatens every art. A sorrowful Eastern fatigue wedded to a diabolical energy for materialistic reactions; a showy and desiccated scepticism, wedded to a tearful sentimentality as sweet and heavy as molasses. What is to be done about that? But that is a problem for another day. Well, then, what I propose is that as much attention might be given--it would end by being as concrete--to the masses and entire form-content of life as has been given by the Nature-morte school to the objects on a table. If architecture and every related--as we say, applied--art were affected and woken up, the same thing would be accomplished on a big scale as is at present attempted on a small scale. All the energies of art would not be centred and congested in a few exasperated spots of energy, it is true, or in a few individuals. But the individual, even, would lose nothing by it, with respect to the quality of his pictures. And a nobility and cohesion would be attained that under present conditions it is difficult to visualise. Most people grasping at such a notion have stopped short at some fantastic Utopian picture. But to enable you to arrive at a fair estimate of my conclusions, I must give you the analysis through which I come by them in detail. And I cannot avoid some investigation of the record and evident moyens, a critical survey, of Picasso. _Picasso_ Pablo Picasso is one of the ablest living painters. It would be impossible to display more ability. In addition to this, he is extremely resourceful and inventive. The back of his talent is too broad to suffer from even an avalanche of criticism. It is the consciousness of this that makes it more easy for me to state plainly his case as I see it. This is, put pretty directly, what I feel about him.