Today's aggressively homogenized cultural hierarchy drives us to reevaluate the boundaries of artistic thought and its objects. Contemporary art is compelled to work within the dominant aesthetic, the aesthetic of persuasion - the aesthetics of shock as well as the aesthetics of self-denial. A newly awakened interest in revisionist historical perspective can ground an artistic method whereby painterly 'situations' enable the audience to formulate its own aesthetic ideals, and even to legitimate them. The accumulation of art objects in the post-historical epoch creates a sui generis metanarrative through whose agency we can generate a positive cultural force to resist the encroaching informational white noise.

The most productive way to approach a painting is to see it as an iconic sign. Such a sign makes no distinction between itself and its object. The traditions of icon painting can serve as a model of the iconic sign: the icon physically becomes that which it depicts, but at the same time it reveals the hidden significance of its object.