BATHERS.
Photo Thannhauser.

How can we conceive of a conscience, which denies itself continually ? What is the
significance of a thought, which does not recognize itself in any of the mirrors, where it is reflect-
ed ? Ingres, Cézanne, La Fresnaye, or many another, who might be studied from this point
of view, construct their own identity, by confronting one another. We admire this imperious
fatality of their identity. Baudelaire called this fatality the Fixed Idea. How powerfully this
Fixed Idea appears in them ! For these men imitation was as brilliant a way of asserting them-
selves as contradiction. It was by accepting the influence of others that, according to Matisse,
they showed their sincerity.

But this other man, who accepts the same tests, triumphs in another way, emerging each
time under a different aspect. He is always different and therein lie his art, his aspect, his
style, his Fixed Idea, that which we call his fidelity to himself. But what is himself ? How
does he bear these lacerations ? How does Picasso agree with Picasso ? That is a problem,
the study of which would go beyond aesthetics into the domain of psychology and would lead
us towards the most human mysteries of creative genius. It would be no longer the problem
of a man's relation to his art, but of his relation to himself; consequently of a man, who though
apparently the cleverest and most brilliant artist of his age is at the same time more than an
artist. We should have to conceive of an artist, who would be above his art or at any rate a
stranger to it. The comparison which we have indicated between Picasso's intellectual progress
and that of certain thinkers or certain mystics will perhaps enable us to familiarize ourselves
with this idea.

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