“Bosh,” said the Realist, “I will tell you what a rose is; that is to say, I will give you a detailed account of the properties of Rosa setigera, not forgetting to mention the urn-shaped calyx-tube, the five imbricated lobes, or the open corolla of five obovate petals.”  To a Cezanne one account would appear as irrelevant as the other, since both omit the thing that matters—­what philosophers used to call “the thing in itself,” what now, I imagine, they call “the essential reality.”  For, after all, what is a rose?  What is a tree, a dog, a wall, a boat?  What is the particular significance of anything?  Certainly the essence of a boat is not that it conjures up visions of argosies with purple sails, nor yet that it carries coals to Newcastle.  Imagine a boat in complete isolation, detach it from man and his urgent activities and fabulous history, what is it that remains, what is that to which we still react emotionally?  What but pure form, and that which, lying behind pure form, gives it its significance.  It was for this Cezanne felt the emotion he spent his life in expressing.  And the second characteristic of the new movement is a passionate interest, inherited from Cezanne, in things regarded as ends in themselves.  In saying this I am saying no more than that the painters of the movement are consciously determined to be artists.  Peculiarity lies in the consciousness—­the consciousness with which they set themselves to eliminate all that lies between themselves and the pure forms of things.  To be an artist, they think, suffices.  How many men of talent, and even of genius, have missed being effective artists because they tried to be something else?

II

SIMPLIFICATION AND DESIGN

At the risk of becoming a bore I repeat that there is something ludicrous about hunting for characteristics in the art of to-day or of yesterday, or of any particular period.  In art the only important distinction is the distinction between good art and bad.  That this pot was made in Mesopotamia about 4000 B.C., and that picture in Paris about 1913 A.D., is of very little consequence.  Nevertheless, it is possible, though not very profitable, to distinguish between equally good works made at different times in different places; and although the practice of associating art with the age in which it was produced can be of no service to art or artists, I am not sure that it can be of no service whatever.  For if it be true that art is an index to the spiritual condition of an age, the historical consideration of art cannot fail to throw some light on the history of civilisation.  It is conceivable therefore that a comparative study of artistic periods might lead us to modify our conception of human development, and to revise a few of our social and political theories.  Be that as it may, this much is sure:  should anyone wish to infer from the art it produced the civility of an age, he must be capable of distinguishing the work of that age from the work of all other ages.  He must be familiar with the characteristics of the movement.  It is my intention to indicate a few of the more obvious characteristics of the contemporary movement.