Art Retreads

It's amazing how much of the old we find new and worthy of repeating. The New wants to completely remove the Old, but after a visit to Expo Chicago, I find that we never get tired of old styles.

Expecting to find lots of edgy experimental work, I found lots of 1960s stray or obscure pop and minimalist pieces by Flavin, Judd and Andre, cheek-by-jowl with recent knock-offs of them.

This speaks volumes about what is found to be meaningful at least from the standpoint of large gallery expos. I saw very few ab ex works, and not much photography. Photography is getting tougher to do because the genre is totally saturated. If everyone had a device that made actual paintings, painting would be just as saturated.

My feeling overall is that we are waiting for some type of new vision or some type of "we're going to the moon" type of grand declaration about what the next big thing is going to be. But in the mean time, existing genres still have lots of tread left.