The English, he said, were so spoilt and awed and besotted with writing that they saw the plastic arts as secondary

I once interviewed a very short-tempered Howard Hodgkin, and he erupted with a paean to the inability of the English to see, or make, good artists. The fault, the insurmountable fault, was apparently Shakespeare's ... him and the Book of Common Prayer ... and the dictionary. It was the English language itself, so voluminous, logorrheic, sinewy, subtle, pugnacious and duplicitous (my words, not his). Only English could describe the gallimaufry and the cornucopia of itself. The English, he said, were so spoilt and awed and besotted with writing that they saw the plastic arts as secondary, a charming craft or self-expression. the best those not blessed by the word could hope for would by to become licensed illustrators of poetic insight. 

A.A. Gill, Pour me (2015), 73