As Pablo Picasso has said, "I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself".The French philosopher and poet Paul Valery would say that a work of art should in some small way reference the past. T.S. Elliot has said in "Tradition and the Individual Talent" that a work of art should conform merely and that fact is it's unique distinction. Gertrude Stein has said, "...that a picture exists for and in itself and the painter has to use objects landscapes and people as a way the only way that he is able to get the picture to exist..."
