The art of painting is on the decline--possibly, we ought to say passe. When the product of long hours is not beautiful and succeeds only in being grotesquely funny, youthful critics roll non-chantly in their cradles and the older ones take an easy turn in the grave. The painters and the paintings of 1932 are not worthy of notice.

"Strawherry" blondes use a brunette's paint pot to achieve something between a Texas sunset and "the steel mills by night" effect on the jowls and cheek hones. Eskimo brunettes are just about as successful with the raspberry, rabbit's-ear pink, peach and natural-blonde. And when the women with a will and a head of hair like the Alabama crimson tide white-wash the freckles and lay on a coat of orange-peel dust they are ready for the brickyards union.

Since we have had ever-sharp poneils of red barn paint, our co-eds need only rompers and a sense of humor (nearly impossible for a co-ed) to clown. The Clara Bow month on our buxom cornfed lassies is just another Cumberland gap in disguise, and the termination of Grate Garbo lip in a dimple is the ending of an opera in "Pop Goes the Weasel." But most mouths are nothing more than Halloween scares--impossibilities after the age of 12 years.

It is sad that in this period of falling faces, the art level has declined. If only the girls would take pride in their profession and economize with the paints, they might at least achieve the distinction of being artists. That's a long way up from the barn painting class. Minnesota Daily.