whether this got at the depths of the artist—was his bold decisiveness in making the quickest impression. They have a feeling for that in Berlin. They don't have much to say. They have tremendously little to say. But they don't linger long over this little. Brevity has activity. This is good Berlin. As it trimmed and sharpened the prose of Alfred Kerr and Sternheim, so the tempo shortened the expression of Heckel, Kirchner, Pechstein, and several others, and held them down to a strict circumstantiality. The war emphasized this tendency, and added cynical accents to the stenographic style. Of course this tendency does not belong solely to Berlin. The destructive tempo of the machine is felt in the art of all modern countries, but in Berlin the movement has found its typical home. It belongs here, as the lyricism of Renoir and Bonnard belongs to Paris.
Consequently, since it was here that Cubism took root, it was here alone that it could be overcome. In Paris the Cubists laid down a purely abstract programme and afterwards gave it up again. In the morning Picasso paints cubes, in the afternoon fountain nymphs in the style of Fontainebleau. Yet in the long run the Parisian orchestra triumphs over all the dissonances of the up-to-date. Berlin is grateful for any style which consecrates its weaknesses. Here it doesn't seem at all so addle-brained to alter painted surfaces by pasting on bits of paper or cloth. The streets and squares of Berlin are not made any differently, and the culture of most hotel guests is in much the same state. Already, naked people are dressed with one stocking. The mildest sobriety can become a starting point. Thus none of these new styles is taken in a very orthodox fashion.
The most gifted German Cubist, Franz Marc, was not hindered by an early death from indicating a way out of this tendency. His large animal pictures are experiments which are prodigal of space; but just as Signac in his water-colours kept intact a reservation against Neo-Impressionism and thereby laid the safest guaranty of his future reputation, so Marc has left coloured animal drawings of limited size, unforgettable things. These animals are not only formulas for this and that mathematic, but through some accident are also droll, animal-like, instinctively-functioning living things. And the accident which brought them to life lends them charm, gives a tastefulness to their rigidity which one could without disparagement call elegant. The elegance of a new-style Pisanello, of
