The Problem with Trends

The problem with trends is so obvious one wonders that it isn't constantly upon the lips of artists. The fact that it is not really tells you a lot about the "art world."

One would think that artists would be constantly chafing against fads. The official line is that artists are free-spirits, always bucking the rules. Why then does a quick survey of almost any gallery produce a reliable crop of the "usual suspects"? Evidently, the whole claim about artistic peculiarity is not completely accurate as regards the sociology.

Au contraire, artists follow trends assiduously. A lot of artists read ArtNews religiously, or pop in at a Gallery-near-you to see what's on the wall. Conformity to these results follows quickly along afterwards.

But why? Why do people even want to be artists, in this sense? (More on that some other time.)

A trend is the MOST limiting thing. It means that "everybody" is doing such-and-such, and if you are not doing something similar that you are outré. Being an artist in these circumstances means that you cannot even predict what you will be doing, making, showing, etc., because unless you've got a crystal ball, you just can't be sure what to make.

The opposite of this quandary is what real art is about. In making real art, you are following some line of inquiry (in the visual world) that has meaning for you. You have some question, interest, love, impulse, which for you is over-riding. Call it curiosity. So you learn what you need to learn to follow your heart.

You are not busy looking over other people's shoulders. What does their art have to do with your heart? Yes, sometimes you find something you love that another artist is doing, and you discover that it holds something you need. This discovery is quite different from cruising the trends because it still comes authentically from inside your own life.

Real art is almost scientific in its quest for something authentic. And what difference could it possibly make if your heart is not in sync with the trends? Is life, is reality, something you just drop like a hot rock in favor of the hippest, latest thing?

The difficulty with real art -- of course it has its own bumps in the road -- is that real art is harder to make, takes longer to figure out, often leads one down wonderfully meadering paths, occasionally down a blind alley. But real art has the final merit: it is real.