“Warhol challenged and critiqued the media, spoofed and mocked it by saying “We’re all stars.” But that also had the effect of attracting the media, and the generations that have come after Warhol took that at face value–they misread his subversiveness. He was able to manipulate the media and turn it back on itself as a critique; that’s been lost. Later generations have understood his marketeering and his ideas about art as business, but they have not understood the radicality with which he mocked the media–how he inverted it and made the culture understand that the media served everything up the same, whether it was a car crash or soup can. I think the younger generation sees what Warhol did as a way to make the market respond, but that was not all that he was up to. His criticality and subversiveness have been lost.” *

And that is the irony of satire.

*Richard Serra Quoted in “The Value of Art” by Michael Findlay

“Our self-esteem is more inclined to resent criticism of our tastes than of our opinions.”

La Rochefoucaud

The artist who wants to conceptually innovate asks; “is this art”?  But when is it?  Or, in contemporary art, when is an innovation not considered art?  Perhaps rather than to innovate an artist has to have a point of view, just being innovative is too easy, a point of view is something that is earned and sustained over time.  Innovation from a point of view has an inner logic that innovation for its own sake does not.  From a point of view innovation can evolve because the known forms have become inadequate for what one wants to express.  An innovation would be felt as if it were needed to uncork some conceptual or perceptual bottleneck.  Were Braque’s and Picasso’s use of bits of paper glued onto a painting serving to liberate painting’s potential depiction of some new reality with the insertion of the real into the illusion?  Were they pointing out the artificiality of all painting?  (But this surmise is too banal to be worth considering.)  Or were they simply doing something that occurred to one of them as an interesting thing to do?

The artist who does not acquire a craft and who attempts conceptual innovation has nothing to fall back on when the pubic loses interest.  He is dependent on the audience to pick up on his latest conceptual insight instead of getting his insights integrated into an object that he can make by himself and can stand-alone.  This is what David W Galenson* points out when he says conceptual innovators peak early.  In contemporary art artists need an immediate communication instead of learning a craft to search for an elusive point of view.  On the other hand, when an artist who strives toward experimental innovation has an exhibition his arrangement of the work is an opportunity for a conceptual innovation.  Even if the objects are perceptual experiments the order in which they are hung has potential meaning from the buried signs, symbols, and utterances a curator may not notice when viewed in the studio.

*Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-century Art, David W Galenson, Cambridge University y Press 2009, pp10-74.

When a scientist creates an important experiment, it does not transpire like an innovation in art.  Other scientists test the results by recreating the original experiment but serious artists want to avoid a recent innovation because they see it as copying, giving up their autonomy as innovators.  An artist might quit looking at Artforum and other “serious” art magazines because he might not want to to get into the habit of anticipating whatever is thought to be the next innovation.  He can occasionally look at Art in America because an artist’s work would have become passé by the time it showed up there.

Even though we call taste subjective because it varies from person to person it is an objective phenomena in the same sense that only one individual directly perceives pain.  A person experiencing pain has an open wound, an inflammation, ache, pinched nerve, etc.  When the source of the pain is located another person, a nurse, can verify that the pain experienced by the first person is in a causal relationship with the observed injury and take measures to alleviate the suffering.  This shows the subjective state of pain as having an objective status.  Time fluctuates, speeds up and slows down as the brain focuses in and out of attention, a subjective state, yet we call time objective.  A sufficiently articulate person can give reasons for what he likes and what he finds annoying.  He will also be able to give an account of development of his taste as an educational adventure.

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.

Consider an example of an artist who has had a transcendent experience, say while meditating.  She then paints a canvas in order to help her reach this mental state when she stares at it.  A friend of the painter, an art historian, declares it a masterpiece of minimalist art – and it is, in fact, beautiful – despite the intended use that will, be different than for a work of art.  Suppose she intends to destroy it when it no longer works as a tool for her mediation.  Can the painting be a work of art in spite of her having made it exclusively for a personal use?  Or consider another hypothetical case.  An accomplished artist declares himself, from this point in time, to be no longer an artist.  He leaves his gallery, severs all relations with the art world, and yet continues to make useless, art-like objects.  His new objects continue to evolve and have no obvious dissimilarities from his previous products but he makes them for different, non-utilitarian, contemplative, or decorative, reasons.  Can he continue producing objects as he has in the past and be exempt from the category of artist?  Perhaps whatever this individual has said about being an artist does not affect what he makes.  Perhaps his intentions and motivations play no part.  He may not be able to determine the meaning of his future production of objects, as long as the objects adhere to the standards of excellence that he has attained previous to his declaration.

We can contrast the two cases above with the intentions of an artist who, with permission from the proprietors, places indiscriminate trash in a gallery.  The trash might be accepted as an “artwork” and examined for his non-formal motives, such as his disdain for the art market and the hierarchy of art professionals.