Note (return) — CLIVE BELL (continued 3)

The Jazz theory of art, if theory there be, seems stupid enough—as do most. What matters, however, are not theories, but works: so what of the works of Jazz? If Stravinsky is to be claimed for the movement, Jazz has its master: it has also its petits maîtres—Eliot, Cendrars, Picabia, and Joyce, for instance, and les six. Oddly enough, les six consist of four musicians—Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Poulenc, and Germaine TailleferZ—chaperoned by the brilliant Jean Cocteau. All five have their places in contemporary civilization: and such talents are not to be disposed of simply by the present of a bad name. For it is not enough to call an artist "extremist" or "reactionary," "Cubist" or "Impressionist," and condemn or approve him as such. These classifications are merely journalistic or, if you will, archæological conveniences. It is the critic's business to inquire not so much whether an artist is "advanced" or "Cubist" or "Jazz," as whether he is good, bad, or interesting; and that is what most critics fail to do. One's general opinion of a movement or school ought not to affect one's opinion of any particular work. One may, for excellent reasons, dislike a movement; one may hold that it hampers or sets on a false scent more artists than it serves; that it induces students of promise to waste time and energy on fruitless problems; that it generally fails to get the best out of its most gifted adherents, while it pumps into a multitude of empty heads so much hot air as to swell them to disquieting proportions. This is pretty much what I think of Cubism; but I am not such a fool as to deny that, experimenting in these very problems which seem to me to lead most artists into a rather unprofitable world of abstractions, Picasso and Braque have produced works of the greatest beauty and significance, while those of Fernand Léger, Jean Metsinger, and other avowed Cubists are of extraordinary merit and deserve the most careful attention. I can think of no movement except that called "Art nouveau," which has not contributed something to the world's artistic capital and to the great tradition. Only, to realize this, one must be able to distinguish not only between movements, but between the artists of a movement. That is what angry critics will not do. That is why the admirable Mr. Dent—whose brilliant lacerations of les six, and other exponents of Jazz, I sometimes have the pleasure of translating to his victims—knew no better, the other day, than to bracket Poulenc with Miss Edith Sitwell. Confusions of this sort seem to me to take the sting out of criticism; and that, I am sure, is the last thing Mr. Dent would wish to do. He, at any rate, who comes to bury Jazz should realize what the movement has to its credit, viz., one great musician, one considerable poet, ten or a dozen charming or interesting little masters and mistresses, and a swarm of utterly fatuous creatures who in all good faith believe themselves Artists.