There was a time when art didn’t require explanation. Visitors could walk into a gallery, stand before a painting, and respond to what they saw, immediately and instinctively. Beauty, skill, proportion, and meaning weren’t abstractions to be parsed by academic skeptics. They were realities apprehended by the eye and understood by the heart.
Today, that experience has become increasingly rare. The contemporary art world often seems to demand mediation before viewers are permitted to understand what stands before them. In place of an honest reaction, one confronts a placard explaining an ideological framework.
