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The impetus to a great new art is lacking. Our millionaires, who should stimulate it, are too recently rich to be aesthetically daring, and our architects are too good men of business to urge the experimental when the easy path of imitation is so magnificently lucrative.
Without the architects and the owners, the decora-
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112INTERIOR DECORATING
tors are powerless. Great art has always been developed by great public buildings where painting and sculpture on a grand scale have been possible. But public buildings in our time are constructed with expedition, almost with haste, and in them, as elsewhere, conservatism reigns supreme. Our schools of design are straight laced and unimaginative, almost without exception. Our committees of judges in competitions are elderly, self-opinionated and uninquiring. How are we then to achieve a new art?
Only, I think, by the bailding together of our artists of every description, by the laying aside of all our jealousies and by the co-operative working of these men and women, under some authoritative head, toward a highly inspiring and difficult goal. If this is possible, our wealthy patrons will one by one come to see the light, our art schools will follow, and our architects, I am sure, will fall into the procession. There will be a period of vague experimentation, no doubt, with many unhappy results, but ultimately we are certain to produce something worth the effort and the sacrifice, for we shall find in the end that we are not a nation of shop-keepers and Puritans, but a country that contains resources of the spirit as great as those that we have developed of the flesh.
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APPENDIX
The following detailed descriptions apply to the various illustrations shown opposite the pages indicated.
The larger part of the designs were made by Herts Bros. Company.
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