It is the career of a Dutch artist: you go to art school, maybe graduate school, live on a starter’s grant, work here and there as an artist in residence, get into a group show, then a few more group shows, have some one-man shows at a gallery, teach at an art school, and suddenly, there you are, mid-career. It creeps up like an assassin.
Is the mid-career becoming more important? According to some, it is not the newest art of a young generation that sets the tone nowadays, but the work of artists over forty. Independence and consistency are replacing change and trendiness. But just what is a 'mid-career, and when does the term apply?
In today’s art, the new has had it. Everything looks professional and serious, even predictable and lethargic. The current popularity of ‘mid-career art’ shows us, says Robert Garnett, the povertisation of the art world, in which the genuinely ‘New’, that which is truly earth-shaking, doesn’t stand a chance.
