In his famous Artworld thesis, Arthur Danto posited an idea that has dominated thinking about art for decades: it is not the physical properties of an object that determine whether it becomes a work of art, but rather theory, history, and institutional context. In this framework, an object gains artistic status only when it is drawn into a specific conceptual network. The prime example of this is Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, visually almost identical to the factory cartons found in a store, yet functioning in a gallery on entirely different terms. This distinction is governed not by material, but by the fact that the object is embedded within a specific discourse. Danto’s theory accurately describes how completed objects operate in galleries and on what grounds they are acknowledged there as art. The fundamental issue, however, is that this model remains completely blind to the creative process itself. Because the theory does not link meaning to the genesis of the work, it leaves open the possibility that sense is established only after the creative process has ended. Consequently, it fails to distinguish between meaning present from the outset and meaning constructed post factum. Under such a framework, the concept of “internal necessity” ceases to serve any constitutive function for the work, and sense itself becomes nothing more than a belated hypothesis fitted onto a finished form.
If Danto’s theory imposes no temporal rigor on the relationship between the creation of an object and the articulation of its meaning, the consequences of this state of affairs should be evident in how artists describe the genesis of their works. To examine this relationship, I analyzed a sample of forty interviews and statement texts concerning the meaning of various artworks. Transcripts were evaluated on the basis of their narrative structure to estimate the degree to which the presented meaning guided the creative process versus exhibiting characteristics of an interpretation constructed only after the object’s completion. In the vast majority of the analyzed statements, indicators of a post factum structure reached high values. Rather than serving as a judgment on the private intentions of individual creators, this outcome demonstrates that secondary rationalization is not merely an abstract philosophical possibility, but a recurring pattern within this sample of contemporary artistic discourse.
For comparison, statements were also analyzed from artists whose concepts presupposed the primacy of sense over physical execution. In the foundational texts and notebooks of Wassily Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint, and Sol LeWitt, meaning does not emerge as a belated reflection on a completed object, but functions as an organizing condition for its coming into being. In Kandinsky’s writings, the doctrine of “internal necessity” dictates the direction and choice of visual means; in af Klint’s work, a symbolic system directly precedes the execution of the paintings; and LeWitt treats the initial idea as a generating structure for the execution process itself. In these instances, the analysis reveals a contrasting model: sense is not retrofitted onto a finished form, but determines its very genesis.
The difference between these two narrative types exposes a crucial limitation within Danto’s theory. The problem is not that institutional interpretation is irrelevant, but that it fails to provide a criterion to distinguish a work that realizes a prior creative necessity from an object to which meaning has been retroactively assigned. When both cases are leveled under the exact same institutional mechanism, Danto’s theory effectively explains the social recognition of art, yet remains insufficient for explaining the source and genesis of its sense.
To clarify how the creative process operates under a framework designed to mitigate the risk of post factum narrative, the theory of Conscious Abstraction must be examined. To describe any concept, one must first define the object of inquiry. The point of departure is therefore not a finished visual form, but an abstract idea—for instance, “Time.” What follows is an analysis of all its dimensions: from physical aspects connected to measurement and change, to how time is experienced and constructed by the human mind. The subsequent phase involves grounding the concept within a system of symbols. Time, understood as change occurring within a defined order, is decomposed into elementary relationships that can be translated into visual language. These symbols are not random signs attached to a completed form; they derive directly from the prior analysis of meaning. Only after they are established does composition take place—arranging the symbols across the surface so that their visual relationships reflect how the human mind grasps the given concept. In this model, the act of physical creation is not the origin of the signifying process, but its final stage: the realization of a pre-grounded structure of sense.
To test whether a post factum narrative could be artificially generated within Conscious Abstraction, I conducted a falsification trial based on an interpretive stress test. The work Star Rise was selected for the experiment—a piece composed exclusively of two visual elements: a surface defined by an arc and a single point of light. This work was chosen specifically because its visual structure does not explicitly manifest a grounding in the concept of “Time,” even though its individual elements might provoke superficial astronomical associations (the arc as a diurnal cycle, the point as a annual symbol). Attempts to force a time-oriented interpretation onto the work—both through language models and through an intentional authorial effort to construct a coherent retrospective argument—proved unsuccessful. None of the resulting narratives could demonstrate that the structural relationships between the two elements articulated the definitional nature of time: namely, a relationship of change within a given duration. Attaching arbitrary labels (“day,” “year”) to simple forms yielded only a collection of loose metaphors that failed to align the visual structure with the core nature of the idea. The obstacle was not an inability to manufacture an interpretation, but the fact that figurative interpretation is fundamentally distinct from the abstract grounding of a concept.
This experiment demonstrates that symbolic grounding cannot be reconstituted purely through the subsequent interpretation of a completed form. The superficial illusion of meaning collapses under logical scrutiny, as the process requires symbolic relationships to be derived from the concept prior to the act of composition. This same rigor of deriving structure from initial premises also underpins the construction of conceptual models in the hard sciences. Transforming an object into a work of art cannot be reduced solely to an act of institutional legitimization. While Arthur Danto’s framework insightfully demonstrates how the Artworld grants artistic status through discourse, by rendering the temporal emergence of sense indifferent, it strips itself of the tools needed to distinguish an idea that serves as the cause of a work’s creation from a narrative fitted onto a finished object. Equating an ex ante structure with an ex post narrative enables the theory to account for the social mechanism of artistic recognition, yet causes it to fail regarding the source, logic, and truth of a work’s genesis. Both historical instances of rigorous artistic inquiry—from af Klint and Kandinsky to LeWitt—and the falsification test conducted within Conscious Abstraction demonstrate that genuine symbolic grounding is not a rhetorical gesture. Sense cannot be arbitrarily attached to a random object after the fact. An abstract concept demands the construction of a visual model of relationships in which physical execution is merely the ultimate outcome of a prior logical rigor. Conscious Abstraction restores to the creative process its original weight and responsibility. It demonstrates that abstract art—if it is to preserve its autonomy and cognitive weight—cannot serve as a pretext for gallery storytelling. It must rest upon a structure in which thought unequivocally precedes form, and sense dictates the genesis of the work before it ever manifests on the surface.