—Yes. That is to say, I have heard of your applying it, and remember that the percentages were very much against Holbein.
—Ninety-three to seven, on an average. How do you explain such a crudity of taste in these groups of people otherwise well educated?
—By the deduction that they are not educated. That is to say that these people, cultivated in other ways, react precisely like savages when confronted with pictures or drawings. They "go for" the tinsel and glitter and are opaque to the higher and more civilized values. They get the most pleasure from drawings that they think they could make themselves. This is the basis of the Eight-year-old Formula widely applied in the department of newspaper comics: "Make your drawing so that it can be understood by a child eight years old."
All of this is clearly lack of training, because their taste is good in other matters—music, for example, and house furnishings.
—You would deduce, then, that the periodical and book-publishing industry has failed to train the taste of its public in such matters?
—It has done worse: it has depraved that taste. Because there was, not very long ago, a fine tradition in this country in the line of illustration.
—Why should the publishers find any advantage in depraving the taste of the public—as you say they have done?
—Because they turned their backs on the standards of the publishing business and became merchandisers solely. They had to sell the goods and they had to "sell" a big new public. The quickest way to this public—through flash-and-crash tactics—they adopted. And naturally ran themselves and the public down hill.
—May there not be other sides to it, too? May it not be that the art schools are not now producing draughtsmen of a calibre to support the fine tradition you mention?
—That may have something to do with it. But even that is mixed up with the other. I think that the chief difficulty is with the publishers.