When I Buy Pictures
or what is closer to the truth, when I look at
that of which I may regard myself as the
imaginary possessor, I fix upon that which would
give me pleasure in my average moments: the satire upon curiosity,
in which no more is discernible than the intensity of the mood;
or quite the opposite—the old thing, the medi-
æval decorated hat box, in which there
are hounds with waists diminishing like the waist of the hour-glass
and deer, both white and brown, and birds and seated people; it may be no
more than a square
of parquetry; the literal biography perhaps—in letters stand-
ing well apart upon a parchment-like expanse;
or that which is better without words, which means
just as much or just as little as it is understood to
mean by the observer—the grave of Adam, prefigured by himself; a bed of
beans
or artichokes in six varieties of blue; the snipe-legged hiero—
glyphic in three parts; it may be anything. Too
stern an intellectual emphasis, i-
ronic or other—upon this quality or that, detracts
from one’s enjoyment; it must not wish to disarm anything; nor may the
approved tri-
umph easily be honoured—that which is great because something else
is small.
It comes to this: of whatever sort it is, it
must make known the fact that it has been displayed
to acknowledge the spiritual forces which have made it;
and it must admit that it is the work of X, if X produced it; of Y, if made
by Y. It must be a voluntary gift with the name written on it.