Problem of modern art.

Painters of the previous ages had a rather difficult challenge. Since paint was never pre-made, they had to either make it themselves, or order it. The costs of some pigments were rather high. For example, blue pigments were even more expensive than gold, due to the the fact that the pigment used in ultramarine blue could only be obtained from a semi-precious stone. In the modern day, we don't have that problem anymore. We have synthetic pigments that have replaced the natural ones, and thus, modern day painters have access to any desired pigment, and it is a lot cheaper than it was centuries ago, however, modern day painters face a challenge somewhat different.
For a painter to be exceptionally good and recognized, the painter has to have a distinctive style, theme, or ability to transfer into image things that other painters are unable to transfer. Since there are a lot of existing techniques, coming up with a new technique can be rather tricky, as well as the theme. How many paintings of flowers, landscapes, buildings and people (and other animals) have you seen in your life? I can say that I've seen a whole damn lot. Maybe the problem is that there are not that many things in life that pose interest to human beings? The most difficult task, in my opinion to this moment, would be painting an emotion without any depictions of human form or suggestions of the emotion that is to be portrayed, yet, achieving the goal of the painting being able to give the spectator the feeling that is portrayed. Try painting anxiety, without using human shape. I find it as a rather difficult task, especially, if the painting must achieve the same effect on the spectator.

And it's not just about painting, same applies to any art media. Music, sculptures, and so on. Multi-media arts, like film are, of course, a counterattack to those, but, in almost every movie it's about people, emotions, relationships and their problems. People are self-centered assholes, we cannot come up with anything of interest other than our own kind. Lame, if you ask me.

Like I said, artists of the modern day face a rather difficult challenge, since, coming up with something new is extraordinarily difficult. I can only feel sorry for the ones that will live centuries from now on, because they will have us as their concurence.