[Chock]

Study a work yes, enjoy looking at it, sure, but if you have to know or subscribe to accepted theories or explanations of this and that in order to 'understand' a work, then it isn't the work you are studying at all, but instead a lot of invariably psuedo-intellectual ephemera. And then it becomes self serving rather than artistic.

Take for example Carl Andre's 1966 work, Equivalent VIII, which is at the Tate Modern Gallery in London. For the uninitiated, that's better known as 'a pile of 128 bricks arranged in a two tier rectangle'. It is called Equivalent VIII because there are eight works in the series by Andre, and all of them, despite having different shapes and forms, have the exact same height, mass and volume, but are different shapes, thus they are 'equivalent'.

But it is no more intellectual than holding up two coloured building bricks and asking an infant to point out if they match, and in fact it is less intelligent than that, since you'd have to be told that was why Andre's piece was called Equivalent Eight, because you could not work it out through mere observation. And if you can't do that, then it is simply a pile of 128 house bricks and a poncy phrase which serves no purpose other than to make the artist seem intellectual. There can be nothing intellectual about having to explain your work when it is not in the least apparent without your explanation, as then there is no need to, nor purpose in studying it, in the same way that there is little point in studiously watching a suspense thriller if someone has to explain the ending to you before you actually watch it.

We could claim that it is the concept that is the art about such a thing, but then we are jumping right back on board that psuedo-intellectual bullshit train.

Al