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| Portrait of the Artist as the Painter Raphael, Wyndam Lewis (1882-1957) |
"Meanwhile, the great suspense is a factor of daily, unrelenting ruin. The enormous cost entailed by the fabulous armaments imposed on both sides in the preparation for the next war is alone sufficient to bleed us white, to maintain a dangerous fever in all our blood; and, since the arms we are now manufacturing are potentially so destructive that when at length they are used they may entirely alter our lives, they are responsible for the great suspense.
"Well. Unless human beings are going to experience the same deterioration in the very tissues of which their bodies are composed, unless their skins are to lose their resilience, their warmth, and all the other qualities which make them so high class a covering for a man to have; unless nature is to begin to take less trouble over our nails, our hair (that may disappear altogether), our wonderful shining eyes, which may become dull and myopic, so that spectacles must be provided for all from the cradle onwards unless all this is to come about there will have to be some great revolution. That is why talking about the alarming outlook for the fine arts appears so trivial a matter when one has finished writing about it. It is infected with the triviality of everything else."
Reprinted from The Demon of Progress in the Arts by Wyndam Lewis, Henry Regency Company, 1955, pp.96-97
