Nothing is more deadly to the art of a country than a single annual official exhibition such, for instance, as that of the Royal Academy in London, or the old Salon as it was thirty years ago in Paris.
The interest of the public is not aroused. The official selection is accepted as a matter of course. What is in the exhibitions is supposed to be good, what is not accepted is supposed to be bad.
As a result, the really good pictures in such exhibitions are not appreciated at their true value, while the poor are bought simply because they are there.
The truth is it requires the new salons, the independent exhibitions to give vitality to the old, to teach the public to appreciate the good in the old.
Good art, like everything else good, springs from controversy, from the assertion of the individual, from the mighty struggle of every sincere and enthusiastic man to convince the world that he is right and that his works and ways are better than those of all other men.
That is just what the new men are striving to do now—each is trying to convince the world he is right, that his methods, his departures, his theories are true.
The Cubist does not admit much of value in the Futurist, while the latter see nothing at all in Cubism. In short the “isms” are more at war among themselves than with the older schools.
Out of the seething conflict of forces good is sure to come; the amount of good depending directly upon the sharpness of the conflict.