I do not care about contemporaries’ opinions because they sometimes have misjudged verdicts regarding present-day artists.
Contemporary people often do not understand or even do not want to get to know artists living during their times. There are many talented contemporary artists about whom we do not hear anything. Probably some artists from this group will become world-famous within the next decades. I think that contemporary people are not fair enough to judge existing artists. Many geniuses were not appreciated during a lifetime, but who began to be famous after death. The best example is probably the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.
Another exciting proof that contemporaries do not necessarily have to make proper verdicts regarding artworks appeared in the XIX century France.
Gustave Caillebotte joined the Impressionist circle in the early 1870s. He began to paint under the influence of Claude Monet and his friends. Caillebotte could afford to support his friends by buying other Impressionists’ paintings. The collection of artworks Caillebotte bequeathed to the French state on the condition that a large part of it should be publicly exhibited. After he died in 1894, another famous Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, his executor, had great difficulty executing the will. Why? Because those in charge of cultural policy found it inconceivable to display in a museum the works of Impressionists’, which the contemporary public still primarily rejected. Renoir could transfer only parts of Caillebotte’s collection to state ownership.
Both van Gogh’s and Impressionists’ cases were only a drop in the ocean of cases when contemporaries did not appreciate and accepted the present-day artists’ works. That’s why I do not care about other’s opinions. I do what I want to do. That’s why I am designing, e.g., “Diaries.” My activity is focused on the people who accept all my doings. Therefore, the whole rest is silence.
