of meaning, and not one of processes. The academy in turn objects to the new movements on the ground that they exploit a brutalized and false conception of life.
Though we accepted Mr Wright's contention—the supremacy of what he calls "aesthetic procedure," his statement that Rubens closed once and for all the path of formal composition is erroneous. Rubens, despite his gifts, seldom succeeded in establishing an absolutely clear form. The intention of his compositions must be studied—it is never, as in the work of Masaccio and Giotto, emotionally effective. Masaccio, Giotto, and El Greco, more limited in the number and the extension of their forms, arrived much closer to emotionally complete design, that is, to forms which ex- pressed the whole content of their pictures. Rubens, a painter of mythological histories demanding an intricacy of forms and elaborate spatial projections, conceived his pictures in depth and complicated them according to the needs of his subject which was visualized in the flamboyant manner of his age; and while his designs are mechanically the most perfect in existence, they fail to arouse complete emotional responses. The reason is that the sequences of form from plane to plane are encumbered with exhibitions of virtuosity in textures and illumination—he was, for all his power, unable to restrain himself, and while technically he affords the student more than Giotto, El Greco, and Michael Angelo, he gives less in aesthetic pleasure. Practically speaking, his work is a vast stimulus to new ideas rather than a structure in which all plastic ideas have culminated.
As long as there are conceptions sufficiently moving to provoke expressional volition, new forms will be found to embody them. If it were true, as Mr Wright holds, that all compositional rhythms have been utilized, there would be no need for the new art of mobile colour; for this innovation at best could only restate in a new medium things which have already been fixed in the theoretic mind. Whether sequences of colour and form operate sensationally in time, or in the calmer intellectual world of pure contemplation, is of no moment—a change of vehicle implies no more than a surface alteration. I do not believe, however, that Mr Wright's opinions will have much weight in the new art which he sponsors. If such an art is feasible, it will introduce new designs compatible with its content, as in the case of the new movements in painting.
