“To hell with art!”

“To hell with art!” is Flanagan’s deliberately irreverent refrain in the Paris art-student circle, where fervent arguments about artistic value coexist with a desire to enjoy ordinary life. First heard as an interruption to a debate about the old masters and Impressionism, the phrase returns as Philip learns to admire the very painters whose importance the students dispute. Its comic force comes from that contrast: art dominates the students’ talk, yet Flanagan insists that being alive matters more than talking about art.

The phrase in the studio circle

At a dinner at Gravier's, Philip encounters a group passionately weighing older and newer standards. Impressionism has recently prevailed over older schools, and the students debate the standing of artists such as Raphael, Manet, Monet, and Degas. Lawson argues provocatively about Raphael; Flanagan cuts across the debate with his first dismissal of art and a call to drink gin. When Lawson points out that Flanagan had already been drinking the previous night, Flanagan replies that he means to drink more, adding that life in Paris is good. He punctuates the sentiment by striking the table and repeating his rejection of art.

The response makes Flanagan’s refrain more than a casual interruption. It pushes against the group’s tendency to turn aesthetic judgment into an all-consuming topic, while his own exuberance supplies an alternative emphasis: pleasure in being alive. Clutton’s rebuke that Flanagan repeats himself too often acknowledges the phrase’s comic insistence even as it keeps the argument about art in motion.

Repetition against artistic seriousness

The refrain recurs while the students discuss Manet’s Olympia. Lawson defends the artist’s power to shape how the world is seen, arguing that artistic conventions can make viewers perceive what they once overlooked. Flanagan murmurs his familiar dismissal and says that he wants to drink; Lawson carries on without attending to the interruption. The juxtaposition sharpens the phrase’s role: it does not answer Lawson’s case, but breaks into it, setting sociability and immediate enjoyment against the discussion’s claims for art’s authority.

The contrast also frames Philip’s early experience of the art world. At the Louvre, Fanny Price guides him through paintings with intense seriousness, insisting that he attend to the works rather than the lively view outside. The autumn day leaves Philip inclined to echo Flanagan, and he proposes going to a restaurant instead. The phrase thus resonates beyond Flanagan’s own speech: it captures Philip’s resistance, at this point, to having aesthetic study dictate what deserves his attention.

Philip’s changing artistic outlook

Philip’s response does not remain fixed. He gradually abandons his earlier artistic allegiances and comes to admire Impressionism, speaking emphatically about Manet, Monet, and Degas. He pins photographs of Ingres’s Odalisque and Manet’s Olympia side by side above his washing-stand, where he can look at them while shaving. His changing taste shows him adopting the judgments and habits of the Paris circle that Flanagan’s refrain had seemed to reject.

That change does not erase the tension embodied in the phrase. Philip’s later encounter with El Greco’s images of Toledo moves him through their strange forms toward an impression of a reality that conventional realism cannot capture. His artistic experience consequently ranges from impatience with compulsory looking to serious, evolving attention. Against that trajectory, “To hell with art!” remains a compact counterpoint: a protest against making artistic doctrine the whole of life, even within a circle whose members continually return to art.