Therefore the everlasting conflict between the old and the new is a normal conflict; the clash between the public and new art, new music, new thought is a healthful clash, because the fiercer the conflict the more certain that what survives will be worth having.
The only excuse for an ugly picture is superb technic—and even then the excuse is not a very good one for the same technic should paint a beautiful thing.
There were plenty of ugly pictures in the exhibition; some were interesting on account of their technic, others were without any excuse at all—just ugly.
A great painter may paint things, a great writer may write things which no amount of good painting and no amount of good writing can excuse—there are plenty of such paintings and books in the world.
But because there were a number of ugly—ugly to the extent of being objectionable—pictures in the exhibition, that should not and does not detract from the merits of men who did not paint them.
An ugly work is a comment upon him who produces it and upon those who accept it. It is a golden opportunity, a touchstone to those who reject it.
There is a great deal of the ugly in the work of Matisse, mixed with a great deal of extraordinary technic. He is a good man to study, but a bad man to imitate—for that matter, the same, in a profounder sense, may be said of every man of ability.
Then, too, it should never be forgotten that refinement is an essential element in all great art.