Irony is recognized with a knowing look, an allusion of being in the know, or with one’s spoken references to another level of awareness usually as an attempt at humor.  We have rueful irony or sardonic irony but what one may mistake as irony may merely be earnest stupidity.  Irony is ambiguous, it can be hard to read, it goes over the listener’s head or it is ignored.  “You are a genius” said with a sneer might be insulting or it might be a complement withholding the full intention of the meaning of “genius” because we all know no one really is; never the less the speaker expresses his admiration.

  “Until 1901, the painting (“Sunset at Montmajour”) was in the collection once owned by van Gogh’s brother, said Marije Vellekoop the head of collections, research and presentation for the museum.  His widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, sold it to a Paris art dealer.  In 1908, the art dealer sold it to a Norwegian collector, Ms. Vellekoop said.  Shortly after that, she added, ‘it was declared a fake, or not an original,’ and the Norwegian collector banished it to his attic, where it stayed until he died in 1970.  The current owners purchased it thereafter.  

They took it to the Van Gogh Museum in 1991, Mr. Ruger said, but at that time, experts there said they did not think it was authentic.”   p C7 

Let us shift focus and assume that someone is moved by looking at an old painting in a museum in an unfamiliar city.  He does not break the spell with a glance at the label to find who the artist is or the date it was painted.  Assuming the viewer is sufficiently informed to make a judgment; he purposely ignores the information contained in the label to keep the innovative status of the work at bay.  The question of innovation then becomes an intellectual imposition; such knowledge may enhance or detract from the examination of the painting.  The initial experience is a matter of “taste” and the overlay of additional irrelevant information is the “after taste”.

Let us suppose a sculptor says he wants something of a near equivalence between the support and the object that sits on it.  If I understand him, and if I were to ask “why?” – if he did not answer that it was because he wanted to see what it looked like, we would go galloping down a endless slope of mirrors; the child’s discovery that there is no final answer; that which is opposed to the visual.