COULDN’T MODERNISM BE TAUGHT TO children as a series of Aesop’s Fables? It would be more memorable than art appreciation. Think of such fables as “Who Killed Illusion?” or “How the Edge Revolted Against the Center.” “The Man Who Violated the Canvas” could follow “Where Did the Frame Go?” It would be easy to draw morals; think of “The vanishing Impasto that soaked away—and then came back and got Fat.” And how would we tell the story of the little Picture Plane that grew up and got so mean? How it evicted everybody, including Father Perspective and Mother Space, who had raised such nice real children? And left behind only this horrid result of an incestuous affair called Abstraction, who looked down on everybody, including—eventually—its buddies, Metaphor and Ambiguity. And how Abstraction and the Picture Plane, thick as thieves, kept booting out a persistent guttersnipe named Collage, who just wouldn’t give up. Fables give you more latitude than art history. I suspect art historians have fantasies about their fields they would like to make stick. This is a preface to some generalizations about Cubism and collage that seem equally true and fictitious, and thus compose a fairy tale for adults.