A great artist is always before his time or behind it.

Moore’s aphorism captures a recurring pattern in cultural history: major artistic innovations rarely align neatly with prevailing taste. If an artist is “before” his time, the work’s techniques or ideas outstrip what audiences and institutions are prepared to value, often leading to neglect or hostility. If “behind” it, the artist may be pursuing an older ideal with such intensity that contemporaries dismiss it as anachronistic—even though later readers may recognize its integrity. The line suggests that “greatness” is measured less by immediate popularity than by a tense relationship to fashion, and that true artistic achievement tends to be legible only across longer spans of time.