I definitely know what you mean, Sharon, though I guess I probably sound wishy-washy to you. Nothing on that sight really grabbed me, though I liked a couple of things. At the other extreme, I agree with you that
Representational artists all too often repeat themselves and go for the hackneyed and trite, which is why we are so often and justly ignored.
That is exactly why Blake Gopnick of the Washinton Post wrote his article trashing traditional portraiture. I am not saying I agree with everything he said and the specific things he said, but it is important to know and understand what modernists hate about traditional realism, and why.
It is equally important for modernists to know what traditional realists hate about modernism, and why.
That is exactly why I said somewhere above that the kind of work (this piece of Garth's for example) that bridges tradition and modernism, that uses tradition to say something new, is, I think, the most powerful direction in art.
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