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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!