I don&#x27;t think that that is what he was trying to say. Art is not about &quot;mimicking&quot; the real world, neither should every artist speak with the same voice - far from it!<p>However, an artist that only talks about his own personal experience will not make art that anybody else wants to see. There has to be some sort of connection to the lives of other people around him, otherwise his art is meaningless to all but himself. And meaningless art is a contradiction in terms.<p>Art should be an interpretation of the real world that its audience can somehow relate to. Artists aren&#x27;t all that special as people, but they can be special in that they can get other people to think about the world around them in a new way. Of course, all interpretations factor in the view point of the author&#x2F;artist, and that&#x27;s OK - else we really would have a whole bunch of artists producing identical stuff, and who wants that? The important thing is that somehow, the audience has to be involved in the work of art.<p>And by the way: what&#x27;s so bad about some artists being better than others? Isn&#x27;t that the way it&#x27;s supposed to be? After all, nobody would claim all programmers are identical in skill, so why should all artists be?