The new and innovative is seldom accepted at first.
But if it is accepted and then embraced, then it becomes a new cliche! And I would not care to be marked as the author of a new cliche when the Art Trials come.I walk through the local state fair's highschoolesque photo competition each year. It's fun to try to spot next year's nascent cliches in the few pioneering images that initially invoke them, then compare that to the glut of the same stuff that will surely follow the next year. In recent years unrevealingly naked women and babies with angel wings and also telephoto eagle stares showed exponential one year growth cycles.
Gosh, ain't that the truth.There's a regional art competition in the closest mid-sized city every year, open to all media. There are probably eight or ten photographs all together chosen for the exhibition. Last year's "winners" included a couple of heavily manipulated "landscapes" much like John Pfahl's digital concoctions. This year instead the motif du jour was unrecognizeable digital "photograms" and a whole bunch of drab photos of parking lots and abandoned industrial spaces, ala Jeff Brouws. The only photos that even remotely appealed were a pair of geometric landscapse shot from the air. Evidently, "beauty" is out this year.
Evidently, "beauty" is out this year.
