What I have said to you is not the opinion of a conservative. It is founded on a lifetime given to the study of art and criticism, in the belief that painting means something. I might say that the traditions of art, like the laws of social existence, are the outcome of human effort extending over countless centuries. The great traditions of the world are not here by accident. They exist because humanity found them to be for its own good.
Art has a social function.
In all the great periods of art it has spoken to the people in a language that they understood and expressed what they would have it express. These men who would make art merely expressive of their personal whim, make it speak in a special language only understood by themselves, are as truly anarchists as are those who would overthrow all social laws. But the modern tendency is to exalt individualism at the expense of law. The Cubists and the Futurists simply exhibit a very extreme and savage form of this individualism, an individualism exaggerated and made absurd for the sake of advertising. What it finally means is, either there will be a reaction toward the classic and the traditional or art will cease to exist.