The people itself (and I do not mean the 'masses') has always given art its essential style. The artist merely clarifies and fulfills the will of the people. But when the people does not know what it wants, or worst of all, wants nothing.... then its artists, driven to seeking their own forms, remain isolated, and become martyrs... Folk art – that is, the feeling of people for artistic form – can arise again only when the whole jumble of worn-out art concepts of the nineteenth century has been wiped from the memory of generations.

p. 445-446 - '100 Aphorisms', Franz Marc (1915)