capitals. We refer to those writers who foist upon the public pretentions, esoteric books, in which-as "appreciators," or as critic-collectors-they eulogize this sadistic art. Claiming with nauseating, pontifical vocabulary to be the final arbiters of what is great and worthy in art, they eulogize this sadistic art, and so bewilder and mislead the public, all in an effort to unload their art-junk-at a smart profit! Truly they are a calamity. One of these, an adventurer in book making, who, after eulogizing, with a cunning that is almost sure to convince the rich morons, but which to us is silliness incarnate, says, in a book we will not name:

Out of the seething conflict of forces good is sure to come; the amount of good depending directly upon the sharpness of the conflict;

this being the usual apology of those wishing to bunco the public with sham art-the good it will do! This refers to the various forms of symbolic sadism in art one finds among the fifty or more "isms" that have been advocated by their creators during this generation in the maltreated world of art.

Then there is Mr. Clive Bell, who also "fell," sincerely or fraudulently, for the sadistic art of Cézanne, Gaugin, Van Gogh & Co., and who, in his book, "Art," makes himself mysterious and ridiculous by saying that "Significant Form" is the essence of all art worthy of the name, and then offers, as an example, what looks like a woman chopped up into abstract form, Fig. 25.

Finally, we have Mr. Roger Fry, who in his pontifical "Vision and Design" seems to prove that he also is a victim of the pest of symbolic sadism in art. For not only does he follow Mr. Bell, in his admiration for mutilated art, while admitting he does not quite understand Mr. Bell's ipsi dixit of "significant form," but he frankly admits he is an art "collector," and illustrates two of his "treasures" in his book. We illustrate one of these, Fig. 26. Reader, please examine this, and remember Mr. Fry eulogizes this chopped-up poor female head as a great work of art-if not in so many words, then by implication. For us, it is a frank piece of symbolic sadism in art, worthy only of an insane artist, and not as good as some, by far, that we have seen, made in asylums by maniacs. (See Appendix.)

And it is men like these who, because they write in a "personal style," by some strange hocus-pocus, succeed in forcing their way into the newspapers, magazines, and libraries, where they increase the number of those smitten by this sadistic and masochistic tendency, and who dole out their degenerating poisonous eulogy of this degenerating junk, with a cunning casuistry and chaos-producing cynicism that is justified only if you look at the world as an Alexandrian lupanar, and life therein as naught but a libidinous song and dance!

There remains only to be said: that all forms of overabstraction in art-amounting to mutilation-and which have only since about 1870 been presented to the public as "pictures" and “statues," and which are presented as representations of something, but generally under false and misleading titles, all of these fall into the category of sadistic art; and those who really appreciate such art, and buy it-only because they really do admire it such people may be sure they are victims of an art-cholera which, originally engendered by partially or wholly demented sex-perverts, has insidiously worked its way through certain strata of our society, like an invisible plague, beclouding the mind and debasing the soul, until the unhappy victims are powerless to discriminate between what is good or bad, sane or insane in art, but who might possibly, if they are not too hopelessly degenerate, be aroused back to common-sense in art by a careful perusal of the police-reports as to the alarming increase, in this country, of all forms of really criminal sadism and masochism in our life, the indirect result of the increase in the production, the exhibition and the cunning eulogy of sadistic art: in which is prominently displayed a tendency to mutilate the body, especially of women, by demented male voluptuaries, who are encouraged and urged on by the deforming power of the force of suggestion in all these, more or less revolting, examples of sadism in art, when paraded and eulogized in our press, in our commercial art galleries, and even in some of our museums!

The nearest historical parallel to modernistic sadism in art is probably that of the Roman Emperor Nero. When we read Suetonius's "History of Twelve Cæsars" and ponder over the revelations he makes in his sketch of Nero, in sections 28, 29, 35 (translated by P. Holland: Dutton & Co., N. Y.), we are amazed.

Nero's chief intellectual ambition was to be recognized as an artist, as a musician, poet, actor, and charioteer. Aside from that, he was a combination of fox, hyena, and hog. The atrocities he committed were so manifold, so degraded, so sadistic that, if we printed them here, we would be accused of sensationalism. However, Suetonius records that:

Besides Octavia, he married two wives, to wit, Poppaa Sabina, then Statilia Messalina. . . . Soon weary he was of Octavia's company and forsook her bed.. Soon after, when he had es

. .

sayed many times to strangle her, but in vain, he put her away, pretending she was barren. The twelfth day after the said divorcement of Octavia he espoused and married the aforesaid dame Poppaa, whom he loved entirely; and yet, even her also he killed, with a kick of his heel, for that, being big with child and sickly withal, she had reviled him and given him shrewd words for coming home so late one night after his running with chariots.

When we then read, in section 34, of the various fantastic attempts he made to kill his own mother, because she had chided him for his monstrosities, we are amazed at the depth of depravity to which a man can fall who is only half-insane. Says Suetonius:

Worse matter yet than all this and more horrible, is reported besides, and that by authors of good credit who will stand for it; namely, that he ran in all haste to view the dead body of his mother when she was killed, that he handled every part and member of it, found fault with some and commended others, and being thirsty in the meantime took a draught of drink.

If only half of what Suetonius records of Nero is true, he was ideally equipped for the rôle of a modernistic sadist in art: a tendency to mutilate what we love, or have loved.

The enormous sham and humbug of Nero's art, the great claims he made for it, were identical with the claims made for their art by the modernistic producers and protagonizers of sadistic art. His desperate attempts to destroy everything that had preceded him, even to setting fire to Rome, and playing the harp while the city was burning; his futile attempt to re-name the city "Neropolis"; his killing and making way with judges in art-contests into which he entered with professionals; his removing by dagger and poisons of such rivals as he feared; his killing one wife about to give him a child; and his mutilating the body of his own mother-after having her murdered, prove

that he was the high-priest of sadism-both in life and art— in history.

In reality, as far as artistry is concerned, Nero was the apotheosis of impotence. He knew it. But he wished to pose as a great artist, the penetration of Greek art into Rome having made the patronage of fine art "fashionable." To succeed, he had to remove this judge, browbeat that one, and do away with dangerous rivals by murder, exile, or incarceration, in order to win prizes! All these methods were charlatanistic, and are in vogue today in the art world, though in a modified form. In his utter lack of the creative instinct, in his colossal ego-mania and vulgarity, he more than rivalled the most brilliant stars of the sadist cult of today.

Thus he perpetrated and propagandized inferior and incompetent art; and, worst of all, indicated to apt pupils the best means for propagating this impotency throughout the Roman world of art, as well as of life. For the manifesting and the tolerating of incompetency in art drags in its train the same sort of impotency in industry, and then in daily living.

Hence, it is safe to say that the real débâcle of the Roman Empire began with Nero in his mutilation of things in art and in life in sadism.

But it is the peculiar distinction of the present-day sadism in art that it is the first time in the history of the race that sadism has become an original Cult, with a system of propaganda; established societies in Europe; and a definite literature!

What is the reason for this? Has the human race become so degraded that, for the first time in history, it presents the conditions favorable for such an unspeakable debauchery? Is it a reaction from the hideous negation of beauty, born of modern industrial science? Or is it the revolt of an impotence, issuing from a paralysis of the creative instinct? Certain it is, that a consciousness of impotence breeds a hatred of all that is creative. It leads directly to a rebellion against the whole cosmic process of the Universe. The impotent are infected with a powerful aversion to all organization, to all natural functions of the human body. Consequently, the different forms of sex-perversion present the available means for the negation of those natural functions, through a substitution of

unnatural practices. When transferred from the sphere of real life to that of symbolic art, we have all sorts of degeneracy and aberration.

Engendered by Nero, latterly resurrected by J. J. Rousseau, taken up by Rodin, Cézanne, and their fellow-victims, it climaxed, about 1865, in this pearl of æsthetic idiocy:

The pursuit of the beautiful in art is an antique fad; the artist should not seek beauty; but, choosing any subject, noble or ignoble, he should express its character in a personal technique. See "L'Impressionism, son Histoire, son Esthétique, ses Maîtres," by Camille Mauclair, 1904, pages 36-40.

The flaunting of this impudent dogma in the face of mankind, was a calamitous crime against civilization, the enormity of which will best be realized when we reflect: that the creation of the Beautiful is the divine purpose of God, or of the Cosmic purpose of Nature; is the universal law; and the deliberate violation of which is, in the final analysis, the unpardonable sin.

They did not know it was a calamitous confession of impotence, of exhaustion, above all of a degenerative, spiritual pessimism, engendered by a lot of men who were either born and raised, or imbibed their ideals of life and art, in the lowest slums of Paris, in which neurosis and rebellion perpetually float in the air.

This fundamental spiritual fatigue and intellectual impotence is proven by the fact that these modernists have, altogether, not produced a single great work of art-with the exception of a few busts and trifles-which will not be looked upon with more or less derision when the world gets back to real moral and intellectual health and normality.

That this disease of sadism in art has invaded America to a surprising extent, can also be learned from a perusal of the score or more of magazines sold at our subway stands making an appeal to, and cynically calculated to develop, a perverted sex-instinct in our country, and which can have but one resultthe spread of sadism, in both life and art.

In this age of camouflage, every sort of poisonous, seditious propaganda of psychopathic sex-perversion, and campaigns for the undermining of American institutions, are masquerading in the guise of silly pacifism, pseudo-altruism, appeals for