Life — May 6, 1897 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

382 all; itis upward and outreachi shows that paresis was not made in vain. Several of our most eminent im- pressionists have graduated from the ateliers of famous sign-painters; that class of work cramped their genius; they despised mere form and regularity. . * « O art is so daring and comprehen- siveas impressionism. A portrait ia impression is not necessarily a like- ness; it aims to produce mental, not physical characteristics, We do not look for bunions on an intellectual feat. The old masters were never able to place on imperishable canvases portraits in- dicating ‘ Indigestion,” ‘ Malari “Mental Decay," etc., etc. This is im- pression’s great triumph, By the simple expedient of labeling the frame, we make the canvases interchangeable, and posterity knows whether it is gazing on a portrait or a landscape, a caucus or a Spanish battle. Decadence in literature and art is the outcome of that glorious craving of our common human nature to wear un- earned laurels; to sit with the gods in Olympus and ask them riddles; to feet that the flea under the right microscope is as big as the elephant; to receive ten dollars’ worth of applause for ten cents’ worth of achievement. And yet—and yet! There are people who have merely studied long and worked hard to achieve: success, who “$0 THE VAN SHIFTS ARE GOING TO HORSELESS CARRIAGE ?"” ““YES, THEY'VE SOLD THEIR HORSES.” *LIFE: prefer cleanliness and sanity to dirt and decay, who meanly seek to detract from the splendid achievements of the apos- tles of rot and rottenness, daub and drivel, Oh, envious human nature! Joseph Smith, HE Evening Post has looked over “Life's Comedy” and seems un- able to find as much in it to praise as it would like. It admits the cleverness of the artists, but finds the legends under the pictures ** cynical and world- ly," and as for the illustrations them- selves, it ‘cannot think the influence of them year after year on the readers of Lire anything but unwholesome,” Itistoo bad about those legends,since, if they are amiss, they must hurt the Post's readers as much as LirFe’s, for the Post has copied them pretty regu- larly into its joke column these dozen years past. True enough, the pictures are unwholesome, but that is a trick of the trade,whereof the motive is toexcite a morbid appetite which shall insist on being satisfied at any cost. The Post ought to understand that, What read- ers could it depend upon at nine dollars ayear, if year after year it had not culti- vated in a certain number of minds a morbid taste for its caustic and querulous deliverances? The Post is a daily witness of how indispensable the unwholesome may become to minds intelli- gently perverted. HAVE NO RESISTANCE TO THE AIR, IN THE WEST. THAT'S OUR NEW ANTI-WHIRLWIND CONSTRUCTION. YOU SEE.