Work Ethic

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We tend to think of the arts as the epitome of personal expression, but it's only in the past hundred and fifty years or so that the artist has been allowed to break out of the constraints of conformity and expose his self through his art. Up until the Impressionists came along in the second half of the 19th century, an artist's first responsiblity was to the society in which he or she lived and worked. Individual artists stood out only because even though they did what everyone else did, they did it better. Styles and techniques changed slowly over the centuries, nudged along by artists who dared incremental innovations. It wasn't until the 20th century that there was an explosion of approaches to the making of art, and the name of the game became being different. One thing has never changed though, probably going back to the first caveman who got antsy one day and started messing around on the cave walls with a piece of charcoal from the fire, the artist as scoundrel and lunatic, but that's a subject for another day.