When did artists first begin to chafe with their audiences and feel irritated at the idea that their creations should be styled in a limited way so as to gain popularity? John Updike in 1985 wrote about this history, what happened to Herman Melville, and what a modern artist might do with this tension. He said:

By authentic I mean actual and concrete. For the creative imagination, in my sense of it, is wholly parasitic upon the real world, what used to be called Creation. Creative excitement, and a sense of useful work, have invariably and only come to me when I felt I was transferring, with a lively accuracy, some piece of experienced reality to the printed page.