Art Reboot

56 Devotion to God, outrage at systemic racism, or response to light filtering through a stand of mountainside pines: all make surface meaning. Underlying the surface, however, there are more subtle levels of meaning, intentionally or reflexively expressed by the artist in the less obvious languages of visual art. Those inner gestural languages are perceived as much emotionally as intellectually, and may be discernible (albeit indefinably) to the initiate. There may be subliminal cultural meaning that the artist is unaware of including. Beyond that is meaning which only emerges from extended audience input. Art historians today may read more in a Renaissance painting than could its original audience; its his- torical context, for instance, which by definition can only be clearly understood in retrospect. In short, the message may be multi-layered, not just physically, but emotionally and intellec- tually, too. However, an important aspect of audience partici- pation is also to recognise in earlier forms of creativity any meanings originally understood by artist and audience – to recognise the original context as well as ours. The marketplace is the commercial and intellectual arena in which art is a commodity. Dealers, auctioneers and collectors treat the physical object as their coin; students, academics, art historians and curators treat the message, context and subtext of the work of art as their currency. Crucially, every accretion to a work of art affects everything: its importance, its commercial and emotional value, and its overall impact in the art world. Those accretions may be entirely abstract ones; Ronnie Wood and Tony Bennett are both painters, but their fame as musicians inevitably