At present we have no such public. A liberal education should teach the difference between good and bad in things of use, including buildings. Oxford and Cambridge profess to give a liberal education; but you have only to look at their modern buildings to see that their teachers themselves do not know a good building from a bad one. They, like all the rest of us, think that taste in art is an irrational mystery; they trust in the expert and usually in the wrong one, as the ignorant and superstitious trust in the wrong priest. For as religion is merely mischievous unless it is tested in matters of conduct, so taste is mere pedantry or frivolity unless it is tested on things of use. These have their sense or nonsense, their righteousness or unrighteousness, which anyone can learn to see for himself, and, until he has learned, he will be at the mercy of charlatans.
I have written all these essays as a member of the public, as one who has to find a right attitude towards art so that the arts may flourish again. The critic is sure to be a charlatan or a prig, unless he is to himself not a pseudo-artist expounding the mysteries of art and telling artists how to practise them, but simply one of the public with a natural and human interest in art. But one of these essays is a defence of criticism, and I will not repeat it here.
A. CLUTTON-BROCK
July 30, 1919
Farncombe, Surrey
CONTENTS
| "The Adoration of the Magi" | [1] |
| Leonardo da Vinci | [13] |
| The Pompadour in Art | [27] |
| An Unpopular Master | [37] |
| A Defence of Criticism | [48] |
| The Artist and his Audience | [58] |
| Wilfulness and Wisdom | [74] |
| "The Magic Flute" | [86] |
| Process or Person? | [97] |
| The Artist and the Tradesman | [110] |
| Professionalism in Art | [120] |
| Waste or Creation? | [132] |