Even though it is one of the most popular styles of painting today, impressionism was given far from a warm welcome when it was first presented in Nadar’s studio in Paris in 1874. Many viewed the new style as amateurish and unfinished at best, and scandalous and crazy at worst, and while now looking back – the era that would forever be marked as the dawn of impressionism – was absolutely dominated by academic realism. And while probably many of us today (me included) may project our admiration for the impressionist masters onto the common views of people in 1880-ish France, this could not be further from the truth. Things that sold were not Monet’s Water Lilies or Renoir’s vivid portraits, but Jean-François Millet’s idilic scenes of rural France.

And while I am not in the least implying French realism isn’t important – though I never was a stickler for true-to-life depictions – the juxtaposition of the then common and expected high-selling realistic art and the new and awkwardly unappreciated, even shunned impressionist movement is a timeless example of the ever-present question of progress. Should we position ourselves at the frontier, so far into the uninhabited desserts of the future, where most will not be able to understand our motivations and perspectives, or is it better to be “safe” and grow on fertile ground, trying to find our place among those, who have already settled before us? And is this even a question, that should or even can be asked, given the diversity of today’s artistic production, where the historical prevalent linear evolution of styles and isms has been replaced by a gigantic field of everything goes?