Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/234

 an "historical" attitude toward them. We ourselves are in the very midst of the whirlwind which sways our contemporaries, and we can neither analyse it nor foresee into what it may turn, nor divine its future significance. Besides, modern art criticism is just now raising the question whether there is any sense whatever in weighing and estimating artistic phenomena. The basic principles of æsthetic theorising, such as the conception of beauty, of formal perfection, of "workmanship," are not only shaken in their definitions, but their very necessity is denied. At the same time the new æsthetic definitions which are suggested are confused and incomplete.

Guided by this consideration, we have thought it proper to abandon in the conclusion of this work the critico-historical method of treatment which has served us throughout it. In these last pages we shall endeavour to stake out the highest summits of modern Russian painting, without attempting to determine their absolute value, or forecasting their significance "before eternity." It is probable that we shall discuss magnitudes which in some ten years from now will prove too petty to deserve mention in a "History of the Russian School of Painting." Yet it is our belief that, upon the whole, those painters upon whom the attention of the artistic world is now centred, will