PICTURES

A studio on the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. There is a small entrance hall, kitchenette, and a balcony before which curtains are drawn. It is a winter afternoon, and a young man is busy at an easel placed close beside the north light. A young woman arranges tea things on the table.

Silvia

Joe.

Joe

Um.

Silvia

Joe!

Joe

Um—um! (She walks over, draws his watch from his pocket and shows him the time)

Silvia

It's nearly four o'clock.

Joe

Just a minute—the light's fine, and I want to finish.

Silvia

Yes, I know, but he may be here any minute.

Joe

Tea on?

Silvia

Yes.

Joe

Well, that'll keep him while I get ready. That's mostly what they came for, anyhow.

Silvia

But he's different. He isn't a Cook's tourist—

Joe

No, he's a relative!

Silvia

You wouldn't say that if one of your family dropped in. Besides, I've never even seen him. And he's something of a collector, Joe. He buys pictures.

Joe

So I hear. The last thing he bought was a Bougereau!

Silvia

Well, he's a relative ... and when he sees your last things!

Joe

Um.... There, it's all done.

Silvia

I'm crazy to see it, Joe, but run up and get ready. Sh! (A knock at the door. Joe runs upstairs to the balcony. Silvia opens the door and admits Mr. Wentworth, rather stout and with gold spectacles)

Mr. Wentworth

Mrs. Carson?

Silvia

Yes. This is Mr. Wentworth? Joe and I have been expecting you. Let me take your coat. The studio's rather upset just now—

Mr. Wentworth

Delightful! How I love the atmosphere of work in a studio! I used to paint a bit myself, you know.

Silvia

Did you? Father never mentioned that.

Mr. Wentworth

Oh, I guess everybody has forgotten it by now. An early adventure with life! Goodness only knows what might have happened, though, if the business hadn't fallen on me to look out for. I might have been a great artist. Ha!

Silvia

I'm sure you would, Mr. Wentworth. You've always been interested in art, haven't you?

Mr. Wentworth

Yes indeed. Of course I have been very busy, until lately. But I always followed the best English magazines.

Silvia

My husband's upstairs getting the paint off his hands. He will be down in a minute. Then we'll have some tea.

Mr. Wentworth

You don't paint, do you, Silvia? I may call you Silvia, may I not?

Silvia

Of course. No, I don't paint. I just fly around amongst the artists and see what's going on. Are you staying in Paris very long?

Mr. Wentworth

A couple of weeks more, at least. I am revelling in the galleries and museums here.

Silvia

Here comes Joe. Joe, I want you to meet my cousin, Mr. Wentworth. Mr. Wentworth—Mr. Carson.

Joe

Very glad to meet you, Mr. Wentworth.

Mr. Wentworth

It's a great pleasure for me to meet a real artist, Mr. Carson.

Silvia

Excuse me a moment. I'll bring on the tea.

Joe

Oh, as for that—I'm working along. Sometimes I hit it—

Mr. Wentworth

Ars longa, vita brevis you know! I want to see your pictures very much. I was just telling Silvia how I delight in the Louvre. I go there with a class for lectures every morning. I suppose you often copy the old masters?

Joe

Copy the old masters? I should say not. I'm not out to be a camera. It's all I can do to work out my own impressions.

Mr. Wentworth

Oh, I see. But—

Silvia

The tea's ready. Joe, bring up that chair for Mr. Wentworth. Mr. Wentworth, do you take cream and sugar?

Mr. Wentworth If you please. Yes, two lumps. There's nothing like the atmosphere of a studio, is there? I love it. I feel I have missed so much. Still, the instinct for beauty, fragile as it is, does persist.... I was surprised to feel so many of my old emotions awake on coming to Paris. So much that hasn't been real to me for years! I have gained much inspiration for planning my new house.

Silvia

You are building a new house? I have heard father talk about your collection of Japanese prints.

Mr. Wentworth

A really delightful thing, Japanese prints. Yes, I intend building on Long Island. And my new interest in pictures ... I shall have a gallery especially for them.

Joe

Americans haven't done any too much for art so far.

Mr. Wentworth

Oh, I assure you! I know many men who are continually buying the best on the market.

Joe

Oh, that....

Silvia

Another cup, Mr. Wentworth? Joe, pass the cake.

Mr. Wentworth

No, thank you, Silvia. Yes, the cake if you please. Why, it's real English plumcake!

Silvia

English things are getting very popular over here. Joe, won't you show us the new picture? He finished it just before you came, Mr. Wentworth.

Mr. Wentworth

Indeed! I should like to see it very much.

Joe

There isn't very much light.

Silvia

No, the light is poor. But even so—and your colors will stand out, Joe.

Mr. Wentworth

Really, Mr. Carson, I counted on seeing some of your work. I have heard, nice things about you.

Joe

There. If you stand just here....

Silvia

Oh, Joe!

Joe

What?

Silvia

It's our little cottage! I'm so glad! That's where we lived last summer, Mr. Wentworth. I always wanted Joe to paint it. Joe, it's splendid! Don't you think so, Mr. Wentworth?

Mr. Wentworth

Yes.... Yes. Very interesting....

Silvia

Don't you love the bright colors and the firm, flowing lines?

Mr. Wentworth

Of course, it isn't exactly what I have been accustomed to.... I have heard that some of the younger Frenchmen and Russians are painting in a new way, but—

Silvia

Joe, it's so alive! I feel it, every inch of it! You've no idea, Mr. Wentworth, how Joe's painting has changed me. I used to be such a little New Englander, afraid of life, but now—

Joe

It isn't only what you call the "younger Frenchmen and Russians" who are learning how to paint—the modern movement has spread all over.

Mr. Wentworth

Of course, I don't pretend to be an artist myself, but I have always studied and loved pictures, and when you say "learning how to paint"—

Joe

That's exactly what it is. Learning how to paint. Learning what art is. Getting life into it instead of abstract ideas.

Mr. Wentworth

Art? But art is beauty! Eternal beauty. You can't change art over night, like a fashion!

Silvia

But that picture's beautiful!

Joe

Art changes as life changes. Art has always changed. If it didn't, why isn't your Japanese art just like Greek art? And Greek art like the Italian?

Mr. Wentworth

Oh, in that way, of course. But all the great masters obey the eternal laws of beauty!

Joe

There aren't any eternal laws of beauty! There's only the eternal impulse to create. Every artist has to express himself in his own way. What you call the "eternal laws" are merely the particular expressions your own favorite painters happened to work out in their time. If they had lived in another time—

Mr. Wentworth

A master would always be a master. There's no change possible in the vision of the soul.

Silvia

You see, Mr. Wentworth, what I have learned these last two years from living among artists is that the painter with an original vision is always opposed by the schools. That is, at first. But when he wins out, then the schools merely take over his technic and use it as a club to put down the next creator. And so it goes.

Mr. Wentworth

Naturally, the great artist suffers hardship. But if we once admit there are no laws, where are we? Anarchy!

Joe

The laws are contained in the impulses themselves. They come with the vision, not before it! If any one thinks this modern art is just an easy way of painting—

Silvia

Indeed it isn't! Joe works much harder than the students who go to the schools. Of course, he doesn't paint by the clock.

Mr. Wentworth

But the Louvre! All those beautiful pictures, those priceless treasures! What about the Louvre?

Joe

The Louvre? It's a museum.

Mr. Wentworth

What do you mean by "it's a museum"?

Joe

I mean that it's the place to put pictures in when they are dead.

Mr. Wentworth

Dead? A great masterpiece dead?

Joe

Of course. No man lives forever. Nobody that was ever born was useful enough to live forever. The bigger a man is the longer his influence is creative, in art and everything else, but the time always comes when his value is spent. When the world needs a new influence.

Silvia

It's really wonderful, Mr. Wentworth, how knowing the truth about art shows one the truth about other things. When I remember what I used to believe!

Mr. Wentworth

But see here, young man, you wouldn't do away with the Louvre, would you? Why, what would happen if these ideas were carried out....

Joe

No, I wouldn't do away with it. Why should I? If to burn it down would wake people up to life, I'd do it in a minute. But it wouldn't. They would only sanctify the superstition and make it immortal. No, leave the Louvre as it is. It's really quite useful.

Mr. Wentworth

But good gracious! Useful?

Joe

Yes. Like history. To do away with the Louvre would be to destroy a part of history. There's no good doing that. We need history—it cranks up life—but we've got to recognize that after all it is only history, not life itself—not art.

Mr. Wentworth

But what is art, if the Louvre isn't?

Silvia

Don't you see, Mr. Wentworth? If you could only get for a moment into the stream of experience where Joe and the others brought me! A picture is art as long as it's alive—as long as it can give back the fresh, first-hand impulses that were put into it. After that—when life has flowed on and set up new impulses requiring a different expression—then a picture drops back upon a lower level. What Joe calls history.

Joe

Like everything else.

Mr. Wentworth

But you put art on the same plane as invention. An improved motor car scraps the old model. But you can't improve art!

Joe

No, certainly not. We don't try to. We just do our best. We recover art.

Mr. Wentworth

Recover it?

Silvia

Yes—discover it all over again. It gets lost, lost in hard and fast rules or sentimentality, then a genius comes along and digs down to the buried city—creation. Art isn't like invention. It's more like religion.

Mr. Wentworth

There you are!

Joe

There we are! Isn't there a struggle going on all the time to free religion, the spirit of religion, from hard and fast rules and from false emotions? It's exactly the same thing.

Mr. Wentworth

Ah, but rules are necessary to maintain order. That's what I insist about art. We must have rules!

Silvia

I know exactly what you mean, Mr. Wentworth. You mean that if fanatics tore down all the churches on the street corners, and there weren't any more Sunday morning sermons, everybody would run wild. But there again it's the same thing as with art: the man who has the spirit of the thing in him feels that the spirit itself is a far better control than heaps of stones and sermons. It's all a matter of living. Imagine asking one of the Apostles which church he went to!

Mr. Wentworth

Wait! We are getting art mixed up with too much else. Didn't you say, Mr. Carson, that pictures died when they no longer gave out impulses of beauty?

Joe

Yes.

Mr. Wentworth

Well! I admit there are dead pictures, too many of them, but they are the canvasses that were still-born. The masterpieces in the Louvre still give out impulses—beautiful impulses—to many of us, thank heaven!

Silvia

But that's just it! The impulses you mean aren't those of art at all. They—

Joe

Those pictures don't give out impulses to the artist. The impulses they do give out are only the emotions that satisfy the student who has learned some rules and then sees the rules worked out. The artist produced the rules as a side issue, but you are trying to make the rules produce the artist. That's the difficulty when people as a whole lose the creative sense. They are satisfied with things at second-hand. Second-hand expressions of life, and second-hand philosophies to justify the expressions. It's a kind of conspiracy in which everybody works against everybody else. Only the few real artists in any generation break through it into the light.

Silvia

The light of the sun!

Mr. Wentworth

I fear we are hopelessly at odds in this question. Well, as the Romans said, there's no disputing about tastes. Every one to his own taste.

Joe

No!

Mr. Wentworth

What do you mean?

Joe

I mean that it's a disgrace that Americans only study and only buy old masters. It's a burning shame that all they know about art is what they have been taught in books. They let their own artists starve—they make them come over here—while they bid up a Raphael like a block of shares. What good does it do Raphael? He had his day. And look how it holds back our own possible Raphaels!

Mr. Wentworth

Raphael? Ah, you are still very young. You don't understand the attitude of the majority, Mr. Carson. Raphael is one of our great inspirers of beauty.

Joe

You mean culture!

Silvia

Oh, it's getting quite dark. Joe, light the light.

Mr. Wentworth

Dear me, so it is! What time is it? It must be getting late—Good gracious! I have an engagement.

Silvia

You can't stay for a little dinner with us in the Quarter, Mr. Wentworth? Afterward we could go to one of the cafés.

Mr. Wentworth

I'm afraid I can't, Silvia. It's been a great pleasure to meet you both, I assure you. These little differences of opinion....

Silvia

Oh, that's all right. We argue art and religion every day, don't we, Joe? Of course, though, we do feel strongly about the young artists—the young American artists. They come over here, and then they have to burn their bridges ... and we see how wonderful America could be if they were given things to do instead of being neglected....

Joe

Here's your coat, Mr. Wentworth.

Mr. Wentworth

Thank you. Thank you for the delicious tea, Silvia. If I weren't leaving town so soon.... Good night.

Sylvia

Good night. The stairs are rather dark.... (He goes out)

Joe

Damn!

Sylvia

Yes, I know, Joe. It's discouraging....

Joe

Discouraging? It's immoral! Oh, these smug people who have been taught what to admire! These unborn souls who want to shut us all up in the dark! I suppose he went away thinking I put myself up higher than Raphael. Who are we painting for? They don't want it—wouldn't take it for a gift. And here we are, a poor little group, standing amazed before the glory of the sun, and painting it—for the blind!

Silvia

Some day, Joe....

Joe

Some day—yes, when the life has oozed out of all our bright canvasses, when only the "rules" are left. And we won't be able to rise from our graves and curse them!

Silvia

Now, Joe!

Joe

I guess I let you in for a hard time, Silvia. I wish sometimes I could really paint the kind of thing that goes with stupid people's dining rooms. They with their Long Island Louvres!

Silvia

If you did, Joe, I'd put it in the stove. Don't think you are having all the fun of being a pioneer. It's exciting to be within a mile of it!

Joe

Good girl. Ugh! Let's go to Boudet's and have dinner. I want to get the bad taste out of my mouth!