When dealing with artworks of the past, there seems to be a tendency to treat individual pieces as representatives of their whole era. The work of art is made to support an impression of the period it arose in – its worldview, beliefs and prejudices, its spirit. On the other hand, our own prejudice about contemporary artists is that they are eccentric, strange, not like other people.
Is it that the eccentric is the best position from which to describe the centre? The artists stand without, aside, removed from their contemporaries and so can better see what they are about.
The thought is more comforting than the other one that suggests itself: that the future will define our own era by our artists.
Thoughts fallen by the wayside 