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The article focuses on the book "Transformations: Critical and Speculative Essays on Art," by Roger Fry. The present volume, drawn from six years of subsequent criticism, shows a steady progress toward full perception and balanced appraisal of a wide variety of artistic forms. Touching on subjects as diverse as Chinese bronzes, post-impressionist drawings, the paintings of J.S. Sargent and Vincent Van Gogh, it adds significance and interest to all of them. No reader with a mind of his own will agree with all of its theories and judgments, certainly, but its author asks for comparison of findings rather than agreement.

When a new artist or type of art achieves recognition, there usually follows a period of sentimental worship as uncritical as the hostility that preceded it With regard to Negro art, the period of worship has begun and everything with a Negro flavor, in literature, music and the plastic arts, is riding on the crest of a popular fad. The Blondiau African Collection, now being shown by the editor of the Theater Arts Monthly at the New Art Circle in New York, deserves attention chiefly because it comes at this crucial period. It has a distinguished list of patrons, who have lent their names, it is to be hoped, as an expression of general sympathy for the Negro renaissance rather than of admiration for the particular objects shown. Although most of the modern carvings are crude and weak, occasionally one of them catches some of the force of its ancient prototypes.

The article presents information on the book "Personal Reminiscences of Auguste Rodin," by Anthony M. Ludoviei. The legendary figure of Rodlin, as the Michelangelo of our days, has grown hugely since his death in the confusion of war time. The recent gift of an elegantly housed Rodin collection to the city of Philadelphia and the steady flow of hero-worshiping books by his admirers are indications of the vitality of that popular legend. Meanwhile the judgment of artists is divided; a few academicians still shudder at his "sadistic distortions," and the radicals commonly ignore him as the last writhe of a dying Hellenistic tradition.

The article presents discussion on three books. The books are "Renoir: An Intimate Record" by the author Ambroise Vollard; "The Last Years of Rodin," by the author Marcelle Tirel and translated by R. Francis; and "Personalities in Art," by the author Royal Cortissoz. The contempt of the artist for the critic is a recurrent note in the first two of these books, and the third, by America's most established art critic, unconsciously helps to explain and justify this proverbial antipathy. Cortissoz is the perfect example of the academic type of critic.