the more art i make, and the more i learn about art, the more i see how many different approaches there are. and when i think about moving through the timeline of art history, i see a strange evolution of not only the artists, but of the art buyers, viewers, patrons, collectors and curators.
i think about the art before the 20th century. there is so much religious art. there are so many portraits of nobility. i realize that the stuff we see in museums is mostly stuff the artist was commissioned to paint. this was the stuff from his day job basically. we don’t see much of what he painted on his own, for himself.
then we move into the modern art phase. the mid 1900’s. especially the 1960’s. there we have the artist being celebrated for being weird, conceptual, experimental. we moved away from artists being chroniclers of political and religious history.
but during this time, and even for decades after, there was still this strange arbitrary division between fine artists and illustrators. in many cases, the successful illustrators were far better draftsmen, far better technically than the fine artists. but the fine artists were weirder.
these days, it seems we are finally starting to bride that gap. low-brow art, street art, design and illustration. finally these artists get to show in galleries and museums as well as the ‘ivory tower’ fine artists.
