The love for and the success in color of our school is, after
all, a part of its conservatism.
It may seem an odd way of praising a modern school to call it the least
modern of any. It _would_ be an odd way of praising that school if its
lack of modernness were a mere matter of lagging behind or of standing
still and marking time. But if the "march of progress" has been
down-hill--if the path that is trod leads into a swamp or over a
precipice--then there may be most hopefulness for those who can 'bout
face and march the other way. I have, elsewhere in this volume, given at
some length some of my reasons for thinking that modern art has been
following a false route and is in danger of perishing in the bog or
falling over the cliff. If it is so we may congratulate ourselves that
those of our painters who are still following the rest of the world have
not so nearly reached the end of the road, and that those who are more
independent have discovered in time what that end is and have turned
back.
It is because it is least that of to-day that I believe our art may be
that of to-morrow--it is because it is, of all art now going, that which
has most connection with the past that I hope the art of America may
prove to be the art of the future.
VII
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS[C]
[C] Address delivered before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on
February 22, 1908.
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