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and the real amateurs with buying. I prefer the dealers in 
antiquities who sell us interesting works at least of the epoch 
they represent even if they are false! What difference is there 
really between a real and a false Rembrandt? Only the ex 
perts following the interest they have in them declare them 
“good” or “bad”. Besides, the works these dealers in antiquities 
offer us are sometimes much more modern than those shown 
by the merchants of so-called modern art; as for example the 
imitations of negro sculpture or the imitations of Egyptian or 
Byzantine artists,—in fact all this paraphernalia worthy of the 
Grevin museum, which has less freshness to my way of think 
ing than the discovery of a mummy of a Pharaoh king. 
To interest us it is not enough to interpret with more or less 
fancy the work of a race or of a man—work which is the pure 
expression of the needs or of the civilization of an epoch. 
Modigliani was a charming man but he would have done 
better to turn to the movies! 
That which I have just said to you is a part of the philosophy 
of Da, are we not agreed, my dear Christian? There is some 
times more art in knowing how to drink a cocktail than in know 
ing how to mix blue or vermillion with white, more art in de 
signing the practical side of an automobile than in imitating 
the buttocks of an Italian model of the Place Pigalle, more art 
in constructing a motor than in copying a poilu with his twenty 
kilos of imbecility on his back, more art in making a watering 
pot than in making the portrait of an apple! Finally there is 
more art in living without nationality than in declaring oneself 
Parisian, as a young poet does who sometimes finds a way to 
defame himself before others have the fun of doing it. 
The fruits which grow in an orangery always smell a little 
of dung and never of orange; it is the same with the brains, 
whose intelligence develops in the “Closerie des Lilas” or in 
contact with thinkers doing their work under the influence of 
orange bitters or Dubonnet cordial! 
Long live the “Cent-mille Chemises,” Felix Potin and 
Dufayel,—these are the real men of genius of our epoch. I 
prefer a can of peas Roedel to a dead constrained nature full 
of the boring mannerisms of the charlatans of the rue d’Astorg!