The context of no context: Guston revisited
Art only has meaning if it is an appropriate sanctioned meaning, as decided by those who show it and make it accessible to those who prove that they are the type to whom it may be shown and to whom access is justified. The gate keepers who are endowed with authority have concern that the art they want to show us plebes may be “taken out of context.” Presumably this means using the art as a means to an unsavory end. Or to be interpreted to mean something that the gatekeepers don’t want it to mean or to an interpretation to which they don’t think it should be susceptible. But this is not taking a work out of context, this insisting that a work needs to stay within the bounds of accepted interpretation. To stay calcified. To lack autonomy.
