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"A mystery! A mystery! Where can I lay meaning?"
"[Art] is a cultural structure such that its prize is "what it is about." ... there is something to be unlocked, understood. There is something to be won. This is the belief. ... 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."
Content becomes the lure to questions. PR: "the viewer is compelled to seek out connecting lines running through the apparently disparate subject matter; associations, and conversations that must be imagined and elaborated in order to complete the circuit." But content is the red herring. Questions are Frankensteinian death-in-life of art. The actual meaning is in this means to distribute meaning. To make it feel like there may be some. A meaning-feeling metaphor that's apt to life. There may be none!