We live in an era of extremes. Maybe it was always the case, at least in Western Culture. Whatever the idea or practice, the tendency was and is to take it to the most extreme level of realization. Then the idea or practice collapses and something new is begun. The way to be an artist today is clearly to do whatever you do to the most extreme. If you use paint then either go for the most lavish, extravagant use of it or to the opposite extreme , the most wispy, delicate, slight. It's gotta always be 'over the top'. Smart artists know they can't 'begin' anything because beginnings of a new cultural shift are pan-cultural events. They happen insidiously and seemingly everywhere as anyone who has studied the origins of new ideas quickly learns. But artists, alone and by sheer will and genius can and do finish cultural eras. They are the great ones we all admire. Cezanne didn't invent cubism. He finished the Renaissance perspectival and narrative tradition. Cubism was invented by scholars looking back at a wide array of tentative changes. So it is with any idea. What could be more vivid in that respect than the so-called arms race. To invent the most extreme weapons is the name of the game; to build the most extreme (highest) building, or the fastest plane, to perform the most difficult feat in athletics, etc. The list is long. The closer a cultural era is to the most extreme, the closer it is to radical change. The whole Western World is now in a Baroque phase. We're at the extreme of what our culture is.
Go for the extreme of your idea! Take it to the breaking point! Better to be on the wave than under it. wc
