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Painting is a cultural structure such that painting's prize is "what it is about." Rather than creating meaning within a culture, the object itself is said to mean. Whether it's painting containing "truth" or a mysterious set of eyes that follow you, there is something to be unlocked, understood. There is something to be won. This is the belief. Even the hardest attempts to slap the viewer with just fucking looking at the thing are always already subverted into questions of what this visceral slap means. Painting begins to be prized not for painting but for this mystery. And a mystery, should it not spoil itself, cannot tell you its answer. A mystery instead must load its objects with intent, clues, an ambrosia of noir, an affect of meaning. Thus the puzzification of painting. Symbolist clue boards. "Colonel Rublev in the museum with a candlestick"
See too: Matte Representation, Mathew Cerletty