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Before modern times art was the prerogative of wealthy patrons and institutions such as the Church and State. An artist did not paint what he wanted, but what the patron ordered, that is, by commission. Portraits of important persons were most in demand. Next, religious icons and historical subjects dominated the subject matter of painting. Pagan mythology was the subject of imaginative painting, and again, as specified by the patron.
Amateur artists were unknown before modern times. Training in art was by apprenticeship. There were no art schools. The materials of art, such as oil paint, were scarce and costly. Precious materials were not wasted on idle subjects. It was not until the emergence of the mercantile economy that speculative subjects found place in art.
The nature landscape, without human figures or narrative subject, would be the first revolution in art. The interest in scenic backgrounds extended to quaint village scenes and rustic peasants, and eventually led to cosmopolitan city scenes. In these, even if the Boulevard could be identified by name, the pedestrians in the painting were as nameless as the rustic peasants in the rural environment which preceded them.
Paintings of common people, typically the pedestrian milieu present in every urban scene, came to be known as "genre painting." The figures were generic, or what we now call "stock" figures. The figure was treated as but one element of the composition. Generic figures could be of artistic interest in themselves, downplaying the background context, all while remaining nameless. The anonymous beggar, for example, is a popular and venerated subject of genre painting.
The post-Industrial, "service" economy produced an entirely new class of non-participating subjects. They will not work. They decline assistance. They want to be left alone. They are not all homeless, but the homeless are the most obvious manifestation of the new, non-participating class. It is these social outcasts which are the subject of my paintings. They can be seen by everyone, everywhere. An artistic survey of the contemporary scene would be incomplete without homeless persons in the picture.