ART CHRONICLE
Fauvism in the hands of Matisse, and late Impressionism in those of
Bannard and Vuillard, have been capable of, Cubism remains the great
phenomenon, the epoch-making feat of twentieth-century art, a style that
has changed and determined the complexion of Western
art
as radically
as Renaissance naturalism once did. And the main factor in the recent
decline of art in Europe is the disorientation of Cubist style, which is
involved in a crisis that-by a seeming quirk-spares the surviving mem–
bers of the generation of artists preceding it in point of historical devel–
opment.
Yet it does not matter who is exempted from this crisis, so long
as Cubism is not. For Cubism is still the only vital style of our time,
the one best able to convey contemporary feeling, and the only one
capable of supporting a tradition which will survive into the future and
form new artists. The surviving masters of Impressionism, Fauvism, and
Expressionism can still deliver splendid performances, and they can in–
fluence young artists fruitfully-but they cannot
form
them. Cubism is
now the only school. But why, then, if Cubism is the only style adequate
to contemporary feeling, should it have shown itself, in the persons of
its masters, less able to withstand the tests of the last twenty years? The
answer is subtle but not far-fetched.
The great art style of any period is that which relates itself to the
true insights of its time. But an age may repudiate its real insights,
retreat to the insights of the past-which, though not its own, seem safer
to act upon-and accept only an art that corresponds to this repudia–
tion; in which case the age will go without great art, to which truth of
feeling is essential. In a time of disasters the less radical artists, like the
less radical politicians, will perform better since, being familiar with the
expected consequences of what they do, they need less nerve to keep to
their course. But the more radical artists, like the more radical politicians,
become demoralized because they need so much more nerve than the
conservatives in order to keep to a course that, guided by the real insights
of the age, leads into unknown territory. Yet if the radical artist's loss of
.
'
nerve becomes permanent, then art declmes as a whole, for the conserva-
tive artist rides only on momentum and eventually loses touch with
the insights of his time-by which all genuine artists are nourished.
Or else society may refuse to have any new insights, refuse to make
new responses-but in that case it would be better not to talk about art
at all...•
Cubism originated not only from the art that preceded it, but also
from a complex of attitudes that embodied the optimism, boldness, and
self-confidence of the highest stage of industrial capitalism, of a period
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