[Sidenote: The Abolition of Catalogues.]
The average Englishman takes his religion on Sundays and his Art in the
spring. Influences that should permeate life are collected in chunks at
particular seasons. This is sufficient to prove how little they are
really felt or understood. The Academy headache is the due penalty of
hypocrisy. It is the catalogue that is the greatest coadjutor of cant. If
pictures, besides being hung, were treated like convicts in becoming
merely numbers, without names either of painters or subjects, what a
delightful confusion of critical tongues would ensue! But conceding that
a picture should have the painter's name, for the sake of the artist (or
his enemies), I would propose that everything else be abolished. It is
not unfair to subject pictures to this severe test, because, of all forms
of art, painting is the one whose appeal is instantaneous, simple and
self-complete. If a picture cannot speak for itself, no amount of
advocacy will save it. If it tells a story (which no good picture
should), let it at least do so without invoking the aid of the rival art
of literature. Literature does not ask the assistance of pictures to make
its meaning clear. Nor, too, is anything gained by calling colours
harmonies or symphonies.
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