Arthur Lubow's Times article, "The New Leipzig School," is fantastic. Not only do we get a biographical view of the highly inventive, strange-named superstar Neo Rauch, but we get this great nugget:

"[Christian references and Greek myths] were used in a very intelligent way and could be read by people who were intelligent and had a higher level of education," Rink says. "Nobody paints a Sisyphus or Icarus anymore. Artists are free to interpret the world without enigmatic tools."

Rink, Neo Rauch's painting professor at the Leipzig academy, sees freedom in the open-ended possibilities of making art. What makes this interesting is that this turn -- from iconography to open-field -- changed the entire way in which spectators approach modern/contemporary art. In my opinion, the act of someone else looking is what turns art from being 'useless' to being meaningful. (But more on that, Foucault, and Barthes in a longer post...) Because art has taken such different forms in the past forty years, from conceptual art to video art, looking at contemporary art has become a slightly demanding proposition. Around the beginning of the 20th century, engaged viewers of contemporary art were expected to shift away from traditional Icaruses to a working knowledge of Duchamp's "Fountain."

Thus, an artist's art historical interests and the viewers' knowledge about them can tip the scales of looking at art from a simple exercise in browsing to thinking in visual terms. Surely art history was useful for looking at art for viweers in the past, but especially today it seems that a little knowledge can help viewers suspend their disbelief about conceptual and abstracted forms. Artists are creating their ideas in visual forms for us to think about; and, as I see it, looking intelligently is what gives dignity to the whole enterprise.