Ugliness, not
beauty, is the note of our century; turbulence, strife, materialism, the
mob, machinery, masses, not units. Why paint a captain of industry
against a Francois I tapestry? Paint him at his desk. The desk is a
throne; interpret it. We are ruled by mobs. Who paints mobs? What is
wrong is this, that art is in the bondage of literature--sentimentality.
We must record what we experience. Ugliness has its utility, its
magnetism; the ugliness of abject misery moves you to think, to readjust
ideas. We must be rebels, we young men. Ah, if we could only burn the
galleries, we should be forced to return to life."
"Bravo, Rantoul!"
"Right, old chap."
"Smash the statues!"
"Burn the galleries!"
"Down with tradition!"
"Eggs and more bock!"
But where Rantoul differed from the revolutionary regiment was that he
was not simply a painter who delivered orations; he could paint. His
tirades were not a furore of denunciation so much as they were the
impulsive chafing of the creative energy within him. In the school he
was already a marked man to set the prophets prophesying.
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