I do not mind that Bacon seemed to express such a low opinion of illustration — that is, I do not take what he said in those instances personally. Truly great and original artists do not come along very often, and he happened to be one of them. That doesn’t mean that the rest of us don’t contribute something valuable in our own more ordinary ways. Artists work within their limitations, and in fact won’t begin to produce anything worthwhile until they accept that those limitations exist.