"In the beginning, man went forth each day—some to do battle, some to the chase, others, again, to dig and delve in the fields—all that they might gain and live, or lose and die. Until there was found among them one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a gourd.
"This man, who took not joy in the ways of his brethren—who cared not for conquest, and fretted in the field—this designer of quaint patterns—this deviser of the beautiful, who perceived in Nature about him curious curvings, as faces are seen in the fire, this dreamer apart, was the first artist.
"And when, from the field from afar, there came back the people, they took the gourd—and drank from out of it.
"And presently there came to this man another—and in time others—of like nature, chosen by the Gods—and so they worked together and soon they fashioned from the moistened earth forms resembling the gourd. And with the power of creation, the heirloom of the artist, presently they went forth beyond the slovenly suggestion of Nature, and the first vase was born, in beautiful proportions.
"And the toilers tilled and were athirst; and the heroes returned from fresh victories, to rejoice and to feast; and all drank alike from the artist's goblets, fashioned cunningly, taking no note the while of the craftsman's pride, and understanding not his glory in his work; drinking at the cup, not from choice, not from a consciousness that it was beautiful, but because, forsooth, there was none other."
The art of the past has done its work. The white gods are worshipped no longer in the sacred woods and the Old Masters have lost much of their spiritual glamour. But no need to mourn their loss, they will remain beautiful. We will always look with awe and wonder at the figures of the Parthenon frieze. We will never cease to love the Primitifs. We will continue to make pilgrimages to the Prado and the Sistine Chapel. And Rembrandt will as heretofore receive the adoration of mankind.
Yet the new art will be different. It has to be different to equal the old. It will be attuned to the moods of the modern mind. It will have new accents. It will bear the analytical and complex aspects of our time. It will be subtler, more fragile, perhaps, but it will drive deeper into our soul than the cold correctness of older forms and emblems.
It was Whistler who pointed out that a large picture is a contradiction, that a picture like Raphael's "Transfiguration" or Veronese's "Marriage of Cana" are merely combinations of smaller pictures, drearily linked together by stretches of negligible paint. The demands of explanation, of form and composition, drag in, every now and then, lines and colour notes which are merely padding. They are the painter's concessions to the old rules of complexity. The modern mind demands a concentrated vision. Painting must appeal again directly to our finer sensibilities, speak to us without interference of moral or literary considerations.