Brooklyn Museum Quarterly . llowing: In taking up this subject for discussion we must pausea moment to define the spirit that should inspire and impelit. This spirit is utterly different from that of so-calledeasel-painting, which seems for more than a century tohave devoted itself mainly to picturesque scenes or directimpressions from nature. The form of artistic endeavor ofsuch easel-work might be compared to the contemporarynovel in literature, or, in its inferior manifestations as thework of ephemeral artists, to journalism. On the otherhand decorative painting would find its equivalent in
Brooklyn Museum Quarterly . llowing: In taking up this subject for discussion we must pausea moment to define the spirit that should inspire and impelit. This spirit is utterly different from that of so-calledeasel-painting, which seems for more than a century tohave devoted itself mainly to picturesque scenes or directimpressions from nature. The form of artistic endeavor ofsuch easel-work might be compared to the contemporarynovel in literature, or, in its inferior manifestations as thework of ephemeral artists, to journalism. On the otherhand decorative painting would find its equivalent in the fieldof philosophic speculation w^hich. far from confining itselfto the objective life of the present, derives therefrom pureprinciples: these it elevates to the attainment of a symbolicvalue. In a word, mural painting demands of the artist,besides the exercise of his natural talents, an intellectualprocess, the result of his sense of logic and power of selec-tion. This faculty, which involves linking the meaning of 80. FLIGHT things with their beauty and sentiment, has been and still isthe jjeculiar appanage of the French artistic genius. During our present times, in the midst of all sorts ofextremes, dogmatic or mystic, France alone has seemed topreserve the balance between the matter and the spirit thatwas once the ethical basis of the genius of all the INIediter-ranean races, before Socratism and Judaism had come tocontaminate and weaken it. Following in the footsteps ofour great thinkers and men of learning—who are more in-terested in general principles, perhaps, than in their practi-cal application—our artists have consecrated themselves tothis same apostleship of the abstract; a path that leadsstraight to the Ideal, to first causes, and which seems torange them with the prophets and scribes of human devel-opment. French artists have always displayed and still displaythis essentially arehiteetomc spirit, which places us Frenchquite outside the contemporary moveme
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