It is so easy to ridicule what one does not understand and dares not like.
Laughter never stops to think—if it did there would be less laughter.
If you feel like laughing at a picture, laugh by all means, it will do you good, but be sure you really feel like laughing, and to make sure ask yourself this question, “If that picture were the only one in the room and I were alone with it would it strike me as laughable?”
It always takes just about so many years. What happened with the Barbizon School happened with Impressionism; what happened with Impressionism, will happen with Post-Impressionism; what will happen with Post-Impressionism will surely happen with post-post-Impressionism, and so on. One movement follows another, as season follows season. Life is rhythm.
Each generation thinks itself unique in its experiences.
We go to an exhibition of cubist pictures and we think nothing like that ever happened before, hence we feel safe in denouncing them.
We admit England was wrong when it ridiculed Turner, that France was wrong when it ridiculed Corot, that Paris was wrong when it derided Millet, Manet, Monet, Degas, and a host of other great men, but we are not wrong when we deride the new men. Why? Because we think they are newer and stranger than the men named.
ZAK