This end is quickly and readily
reached, so easy and so fatal is the descent in these paths of
decadence.
"All styles are good except the tedious," a well-known critic has said.
Pursuing the import of this thought, we are led to the speedy conclusion
that the _null_ should never enter into competition. Nothing better than
that the condition of priority should exist between diverse styles and
opposite schools; but why strive to institute comparison between a
synthetic idea and the absence of synthesis and idea, between certain
proportions and harmony and the absence of proportion and harmony,
between a style and the absence of style? Whatever the subject and
whatever the mode of treating it, the intelligence of the artist should
always be visible in his work.
I am more and more thoroughly convinced that the theory of Delsarte,
fatal to _simplisme_, is the true theory of art. What can be more
_simpliste_ than impressionalism when viewed as a school? It considers
no law or science, disregards entirely analysis and logic, the Good and
the Beautiful; it is given over to sensation; vague impressions which
are, whatever may be said to the contrary, only the inferior part of
man's faculties, indispensable surely, but that which we have in common
with the animals and little children; very interesting to observe among
animals, a charming grace in children, but a most unimportant factor in
adult existence, particularly in the artist's life, unless it be
governed by the intellect and subject to the sanction of feeling.
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