Is New Better? (2)

Elizabeth Peyton, Live to Ride, 2003

Since then, we have thrashed about, largely without direction, searching for the next big new thing.

This was surprising at first. After all, wouldn’t it be incredibly liberating to be able to work in any style you want? To improve, or extend, or try to perfect, even, the old styles? (Ofer Wolberger had an interesting piece about this recently.) Or just to do what satisfies you, without wondering whether it is sufficiently cutting edge?

It didn’t happen.

It didn’t happen because commerce in art, like commerce in everything, is premised on the dogma that new is better. This serves many purposes. It obviates critical effort. (If it’s new, it must be good.) And it provides a motivation for consumers. (We don't have any of that. Maybe we should get some.)

I don’t know if it’s possible to get past this. The lure of big money is very strong.

There is, however, an expanding nucleus of artists, mainly painters, who have achieved respect (and sometimes success) by adapting existing styles to their own purposes, without worrying too much about whether what they are doing is really new or not.

And there is, I think, a sense among some photographers that the current tendency to staged and conceptual narratives is not only not a way forward, but is not very interesting either. (Of course, that might be just me.)

The truth is that I don’t really care what kind of pictures you make. I’m happy with what I'm doing, and I wish you the same. Still, I think all our lives might be easier if we could see more clearly that the era in which new was better is over, and we're free to do whatever we want.