ABSTRACT
The Allied Artists are celebrating their sixth exhibition at the Albert Hall. The early struggles are over, and general recognition seems to be at hand. Their chief danger was not antagonism but indifference, but even that, formidable though it becomes in July, seems to be yielding to the persistence and energy of the promoters. Antagonism there could hardly be, since, by their very nature, the Allied Artists stand for no one artistic creed more than another. They stand merely for equal treatment of all or any. It is, therefore, as impossible for them as a body to be revolutionary as it is to be academic. Their one and only raison d’ etre is to put each artist into direct touch with the public without submitting his work to the censorship of brother artists. And few artists, however doubtful they may feel of their competence to criticise their own work, are convinced of the qualifications of others who may be hostile, incompetent, or else unfairly prepossessed in their favor. Indeed, when once this principle is fairly brought home to the artist, it would seem that the Allied Artists is the only general exhibition where he can exhibit without some loss of dignity, the only place where no one pretends to dispense to him reward or blame — no one at least but that vague, inarticulate abstraction, the public, and the contradictory voices of contemporary criticism.
