Art is an intervention in reality, a presence. Viewed with care and attention, an art work will signal its status as an object or text or event it will provide generic markers or explicit clues that will signal how it would like to be experienced and interpreted, even if an element of ambiguity remains. Yet there is a sense in which all art is necessarily self-referential. And it is true that when artists start making art about art, there is always a danger that the self-referentiality will result in a kind of inbent vortex of self-indulgence. He had in mind a certain kind of postmodern fiction, in which an explict and compulsive interrogation of form is pushed to its logical conclusion, hollowing out the possibility of meaning and expression. Joanna Braithwaite, Busted 2015, oil on canvas, 112 x 112 cm, Courtesy Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Photo: Jenni Carterĭavid Foster Wallace once observed that art’s reflection on itself is terminal.
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