An artist is someone who is gifted in some way which enables him to do something more or less well which can only be done badly or not at all by someone who is not thus gifted. To speak of an art which requires no gift is a contradiction employed by people like yourself who have an artistic bent but no particular skill…Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. In interviews, Stoppard claimed this argument as his own: “Donner is me.”
