Perhaps a brief statement regarding the modern _isms_ in art may be of interest. In considering some of the extreme examples, we must revise our idea that art is or should be always beautiful. The many definitions of art would lead us too far afield to discuss them here but in its most extended and popular sense, art may be considered to mean everything which we distinguish from nature. Certainly art need not be beautiful, although it does seem that the world would welcome the beautiful and would get along contentedly without art that is ugly or repulsive. The modern _isms_ must be viewed with consideration, for there are many impostors concealing their inabilities by flocking to these less understood fields. However, there are many sincere workers--research artists--in the modern _isms_ and their works may best be described at present as experiments in the psychology of light, shade, and color. They have cast aside or reduced in importance some of the more familiar components such as realism and are striving more deeply to utilize the psychology of light and color. Some of them admit that they strive to paint through child's eyes and mind--free from experience, prejudice, and imitation. These need all the scientific knowledge which is available--and maybe more. In closing this chapter, it appears necessary to remind the artist and others that it is far from the author's intention to subordinate the artist's sensibility to the scientific facts or tools. Art cannot be manufactured by means of formulae. This would not be true if we knew a great deal more than we do pertaining to the science of light, color, and vision. The artist's fine sensibility will always be the dominating necessity in the production of art. He must possess the ability to compose exquisitely; he must be able to look at nature through a special temperament; he must be gifted in eye and in hand; he must be master of unusual visual and intellectual processes. But knowledge will aid him as well as those in other activities. A superior acquaintance with scientific facts lifted past masters above their fellows and what helped Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Turner, Claude, Monet, and other masters will help artists of today. What would not those past masters have accomplished if they had available in their time the greater knowledge of the present! XIII ARCHITECTURE