the shock of the new

In 1982 Robert Hughes, the art critic for Time Magazine, did a TV series called The Shock of The New, about the birth of modern art. I remember it as an incredibly insightful look at how each successive movement, from Impressionism, to Fauvism, to Cubism, to Futurism, was a new way of looking at what art was, what it could do, and what effect it should have on the viewer and on society. Each one was a reaction to what came before, attempting to overcome its perceived limitations. Each one in its turn outraged the people who saw it, until, one day, it magically became the standard and accepted way of looking at things.

By coincidence, we're showing our client something new tomorrow, something they've never seen before. And there's sure to be resistance, confusion and doubt. But it is the way forward; everyone in the room will on some level feel that, at the very least because they've asked for us to do this.

All we can do is build our case (not as indifferently as Marcel Duchamp, needless to say) and overcome the limits of the existing perceptions, until it's (hopefully) clear that what we're showing is, in fact, the way forward.