Page:The Modern Writer.pdf/43

 ing the aesthetic needs of his nature with the materials at hand, and a Cezanne, a Matisse, a Turgenieff or a Shakespeare could do no more than that. The artist is after all but the craftsman working more intensively in more complex and delicate materials.

The artist who works in stone, in color, sounds, words, building materials, and often in steel, as in the designing of bodies for some of the finer automobiles, is but the craftsman working in materials that are often elusive and difficult to handle and bringing into his work not only the skill of the craftsman but also the attempt at an expression of some need of his own inner being. That is the whole story.

The Modern Movement, then, seen from this point of view, is in reality an attempt on the part of the workman to get back into his own hands some control over the tools and materials of his