The older pictures are of little help to the decorator. On the contrary he rather dreads their presence on his walls. A room may be quite upset by a strong picture. To make the Leyland dining room harmonize with the “Princess from the Land of Porcelain” Whistler painted practically every inch of walls and ceilings, completely covering costly woodwork and old Spanish leather.
To rightly hold a Rembrandt a room must be subdued and rich in tone, otherwise the picture is a dead weight. The greater the picture, the more completely the surroundings must either rise to it or be completely subordinated to it.
It is not so with the more abstract Cubist pictures; they do not thrust a great landscape or a powerful personality into the room; they are not intended to thrust any object upon the attention of the visitor. Intended to express simply the mood or emotion of the painter, they are unobtrusive, as unobtrusive as a pattern of the wall covering, a rug, or a tapestry; in effect they are not unlike a tapestry, save they are essentially modern in feeling, and therefore fit into our modern rooms as tapestries—and often rugs—do not.
Imagine the editorial room of a live, up-to-date newspaper—say a typical yellow journal—hung with Titians and Rembrandts! The paper would be paralyzed, the editorial staff would be depressed by the dignity and the sobriety, by the old-world flavor.
Whereas a lot of Cubist, Futurist, Orphist pictures would be quite in keeping with modern journalistic methods, and stimulating in the extreme. In the picturesque language of current journalism, they would be “live stuff.”
It is worth noting in passing that the time is probably coming when about as many pictures will be bought for offices as for homes, and fewer and fewer will be bought for those graveyards of art—private galleries.
Why should men buy pictures and hang them where they are seldom seen, often in places where the light is so bad they cannot be seen?
Where do most men spend most of their time? In their places of business. Then why not make their places of business attractive and livable?