There was once a post-impressionist exhibition at the Liberal Club, and a certain young man who shall be nameless was placed in charge of it.  He was a perfectly sane young man and he knew that many of the “art specimens” hung on such occasions were flagrant frauds.  Sketch after sketch, study after study, was sent in to him as master of ceremonies until, in his own words, he became so “fed up with post-impressionism that he could not stand another daub of the stuff!” The worm turned eventually, and he vowed to teach those “artists” a short, sweet lesson.  He knew nothing about painting, being a writer by trade, but he had the run of several studios and could collect paint as he willed.  After fortifying himself with a sufficiency of Dutch courage, he set up a canvas and painted a picture.  It had no subject, no lines, no scheme, no integral idea.  It was just a squareful of paint—­and it held every shade and variety of paint that he could lay his hands on.  He says that he took a wicked satisfaction in smearing the colours upon that desecrated canvas.  His disgust with the futurist artists who had submitted their works for exhibition was one element to nerve his arm and fire his resentful spirit—­another was the stimulus he had, in sheer desperation, wooed so recklessly.  When the thing was done it was something for angels and devils alike to tremble before.  It meant nothing, of course, but, like many inscrutable and unfathomable things, it terrified by its sheer blank, chaotic madness.  He hung it in the exhibition.  And it was—­yes, it was—­the hit of the occasion.  This is not a fairy tale—­not even fiction.  The story was told me by the culprit—­or was it genius?—­himself.

And then people began to talk about it and speculate on what its real, inner meaning might be.  They said it was a “mood picture,” a “study in soul-tones” and a lot more like that.  They even asked the guilty man what he thought of it.  When he coldly responded that he thought it “looked like the devil” they told him that, of course he would say so:  he had no soul for art.

Now, he had signed this horror, but (let me quote him):  “I had signed it in a post-impressionist style, so no one on the earth could read the name.”

After a few days an artist came along who was not wholly obsessed with the new craze.  He studied the thing on the wall, and after a while he said:  “Someone is guying you.  That isn’t a picture.  It’s a joke.”

The futurist devotees were indignant, but there were enough who were stung by faint suspicion to investigate.  They studied that signature upside down and under a microscope.  After a while they got the identity of the man responsible for it, and—­we draw a veil over the rest!

Then there was the man—­another one—­who, by way of a cheerful experiment, painted a post-impressionist picture with a billiard cue, jabbing gaily at the canvas as though trying to make difficult screwed shots, caroms and so on.  Having done his worst in this way, he then took his picture to a gallery and exhibited it upside down.  It attracted much attention and a fair quota of praise.