Paul Rosenfeld

“ The creative mechanic no more than the artist "accepts" the machine. Like his poetical brother, he has in his mind an ideal objective. And for the purpose of approaching that objective, he makes friends with his instrument, and drives it relentlessly to the limit of its capacities. There have always been machines, since ever the first humanoid took up a club and began freeing his mind; and between the man who drives the machine relentlessly to its limit and the man who tells a perfect story, there is no opposition. ”

“ Responsible for that are, far more, the people moved by no ideal objective. The good-enough people in the field of machine-work. And the people who sit about, and talk.
Whether French people wanted us to be savages or no would be of no matter in the United States; all the talk of skyscraper primitive art would be harmless, were work proceeding here, and voices calling. The existing machinery, jazz, Charlie Chaplin, would find the artist, for the artist never has to go find the raw stuff of nature. But there is no faith among the American workers ”

“ No doubt, the will to worship a lot of quarter-baked material will eventually be discarded by the determined artists, and lead the incipient advertisers to flattering millionaires more directly, and building up circulation for frankly millionaire-flattering journals. ”