Art & Creativity Quote by Robert Baldwin Ross

A good critic can sharpen your eye; a bad one can hijack it. Ross draws a hard line between the two by insisting that any painter "worthy of the name" treats criticism as background noise, not guidance. The jab is less anti-intellectual than anti-dependence: the artist who calibrates their work to reviews has already outsourced the internal compass that makes art risky, idiosyncratic, and alive.

Ross, best known as Oscar Wilde's friend and executor, understood how reputations are manufactured and dismantled in public. That proximity to scandal and the Victorian press gives his remark an extra edge. It isn't just about aesthetics; it's about power. Critics, especially in Ross's era, were gatekeepers who could launder moral judgment into artistic judgment, turning taste into a proxy for social control. His "even in conversation" is the tell: he's not merely dismissing published reviews but the whole social theater of deferring to critical opinion at dinners, salons, and after-parties. Prestige talk becomes a kind of ventriloquism.

The quote also flatters painters while warning them. It implies that seriousness is measured by indifference to external validation, but it also sketches a survival tactic: don't give critics rent-free space in your mind. Ross isn't arguing that criticism has no value; he's arguing that the artist who treats it as a steering wheel will end up producing work that is legible, safe, and already half-compromised.