"Let us put it rather that I know what is not art for me. I paint pictures but they don't often convince me that I am an artist. One dies many deaths from painting to painting. It takes a long time to become a painter. Renoir thought he'd finally learned something at eighty."
"Just the same, you speak as if you are opposed to new manifestations which grow out of the needs of our time—like, for example, surrealism," Vent said.
"A little synthetic Mantegna doesn't go far enough—in fact, it's exhausted itself already—not surprising in view of its practitioners. What I am trying to say is that when all the succès de scandale has died down and you sit in front of a canvas, not all the credos of new manifestations in the world can help you paint your painting. I know most of the arguments and believe in some of them. I know too that many of the contemporary art credos are a cover-up for nocan-do—and that those credos are seized on by the incapable as justification for their emptiness. But even if valid I won't subscribe to anything I don't understand. As Wagner said, 'I am astonished but I do not comprehend.' Sure, the controversial aspect—the succès de scandale—is fun, but it doesn't follow because an audience breaks up the joint at some art nouveau spectacle that the artist whose work is involved is inevitably a genius. There are guys in Paris now who make careers of being hooted, sure of a certain fringe avant-garde audience which supports anything that is offered because it is seemingly new."
Ilona Klemper gazed reflectively into space. The man Lucy was monopolizing was hard to understand, but he had one good idea. Controversy, succès de scandale, was a sure way to make people talk about one's art.
"Who is he anyway?" she whispered to Vent.
"Nobody. I never saw him before—he's drunk and shooting off." Lucy lay back and stared unhappily at the ceiling beams. That was certainly a queer thing to say, that he didn't know if he were an artist. What did he mean, it took a long time? Hadn't she taken a long time, all these years of studying and dancing, and almost three months on one number? What more could she do if she rehearsed until she was as old as Simone?
"Hear that, Ilona," she called, "we're no artists."
Vermillion's thoughts flowed in a kind of counterpoint. It seemed to him his voice had taunted him for being pompous. The room wavered and each of the semicircle of faces had two black bull's
