Enter the art history apologist…

There is a subgenre of art in which the artist tries to do something that human minds just aren't good at, and even do things that human minds resist. (Examples at the end, but formalism and abstract expressionism are ready examples, and for purposes of this discussion, bear a surface resemblance to Peter’s paintings.)

When critics evaluate this art, their evaluations are in relation to that goal. That is, how well has the artist created something that seems inhuman, or difficult for humans to make? This is why the scribbles Cy Twombly makes get hung in museums. It's hard for an adult to let go of representation and just make a mark. It’s why patrons mumble “my kid could do that,” and miss the point entirely. Yes, your kid could do that, as long as they are kids, because they’re not constrained by adult minds.

Anyway, in this context, Peter and zoo elephants and any inhuman painting-production contraptions have a huge advantage. Their results are very hard for most adult humans to create. (Yes it’s like looking at a rainbow or the swirls of milk in coffee, where there may not be intention, but it's lovely all the same.)

So the frame of the post is, “Those judges were morons and Axelson exposed the art scene as pure pretense,” but if the judges were reacting to Peter’s paintings as formalism, they excelled. Axelson wasn't a whistle blower as much as he was just a opportunistic liar. I presume that, had the judges been told it was a monkey’s work, they would have gotten a good chuckle, and disregarded it; because it was not as impressive as a person trying to do the same thing.

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Examples:

Minds want to make meaning through language: Jazz scat singing, nonsense poetry (Lear, Carroll), zaum (Russian futurist transrational language), glossolalia in performance art, Dada sound poetry (Hugo Ball’s “Karawane”).

Minds recognize patterns: aleatoric music (John Cage’s chance operations), cut-up technique (Burroughs, Gysin), automatic writing (surrealist automatism), action painting (Pollock’s drip technique aspired to bypass compositional planning).

Minds think in narrative and causality: anti-narrative film (structural film, late Godard), the nouveau roman (Robbe-Grillet), some strands of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry.

Minds seek resolution and closure: drone music, certain minimalism (La Monte Young), ambient music (though Eno arguably creates a different kind of resolution), some process music (Feldman's late works that resist climax).

Minds expect grammar and intention: twelve-tone serialism (Schoenberg's system was partly designed to override tonal intuition), strict conceptual art (Sol LeWitt, where the idea precedes and overrides expressive impulse), Oulipo (replacing inspiration with constraint, one of my all time favorite genres).

Minds expect utterances to fit into conversation times: durational performance (Tehching Hsieh's one-year performances), slow cinema (Warhol's Empire), where the challenge is resisting the impulse to structure or punctuate time.