Garth Herrick's Apotheoun is a Smithsonian Competition Semifinalist

[Alexandra Tyng]

Thanks for posting the link, John. It was interesting to see. There were some I could relate to, and some I couldn't. I guess it's different for everyone because art is so individual.

On a positive note, given the finalists, it is remarkable that realistic, representational work with more traditional elements made it into the semi-finals. Maybe some even made it to the finals. If they do this again in three years who knows how much will have changed in the art world!

[Sharon Knettell]

I thought it was very sad. I think we are conditioned today to thing that ugly and discordant work ( every piece on that site) is to be treasured because it is new. It could be dog****, but it is 'cutting edge' after all. We think of work of high aesthetics and craftsmanship as boring.

Representational artists all too often repeat themselves and go for the hackneyed and trite, which is why we are so often and justly ignored.

[Alexandra Tyng]

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.