The speaker at an exhibition opening has to balance any number of aspects of both the art and the artist. Audiences come to openings hoping to come to grips with the work of the artist and expect anecdotes that impel understanding or at least, recognition that artists have lives beyond the gallery walls.
As soon as the audience asks ‘what does it mean?’ we are dealing not with perception but perceptual blindness.
As someone said to me last year, ‘if I can’t hang my car keys on it, why would I buy it?’
There are those in society who claim the right to do whatever they want, whenever they want. To an extent society tolerates such behaviour but that is the point. Tolerance is set within guidelines and laws which promulgate and protect order. ‘Radical’ artists are tolerated and encouraged as a necessary basis to establishing those norms and inevitably become mainstream before they know it. Free will with constraints.
THE REBEL YELL FALLS ON DEAF EARS BUT WE STILL WANT IT NOW
Art history does have a place as a sort of religion but nowadays it is hardly ever used. Plotting a course from Monet to Abstraction and identifying the two main thrusts of the modern era in Cubism and Surrealism gets you only so far.