The Painter's Directory

...complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and and the imperative to change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call "the edge of chaos." We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant and enough stability to keep if from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and the new are constantly at war, Finding the balance point must be a delicate matter - if a living system drifts too close, it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid, frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish,

Michael Crichton

While the above was written with respect to the evolution and pending decline of human societies it works almost as well as a model for the evolution of the so-called "arts" and the "crafts"