Art Reboot

77 13 e legant graffiti In China the focal shift from object to process in understanding art is reflected in the millennial recognition of the audience as full partner in the process. In the West this realisation of the primacy of the art process was finally revealed only in the recent revolution and remains somewhat misunderstood. It is also reflected in recent studies in information theory and conscious- ness. Mikhail Volkenstein (1912–1992) noted that the real value of information is determined by its significance to the recipient. Art, as a primary means of communication, is fulfilled only by the full process of art, which includes its meaning to the aud- ience. In China, this is confirmed in pictorial art, where it be- came standard practice for paintings to accumulate colophons and collectors’ seals, often directly onto the painting surface: positive records of aesthetic response to the art object by sub- sequent artists and collectors. The accumulated vermilion col- lectors’ seals record the work’s passage through time. Carving seal texts, like calligraphy, was also considered a high art form, and was thus suitable as both a lexical and formal addition to the art. In the West, the art object was considered the end product of the process, and thus sacrosanct. Anyone writing a