Art of things we can no longer think about.

What is the aesthetic significance National Celebration, a triptych depicting a gigantic rust-colored locomotive? Nothing about the painting explicitly suggests that a judgment is being meted out — were the outline a little sharper, the colors a little brighter, it could be called Socialist Realism. Yet, of course, we cannot but read the title as ironic. Heidegger wrote that though the objects in a museum remain for us to look at, they are no longer what they were: their world is gone. It is in this sense that Guotai's cars and trains are the evidence of a lost era: by appearing to us in all their drabness and lostness, they show us what we can no longer think.

I expect Heidegger was talking about olden objects themselves - we can no longer think like the folks that gathered around the ancient wine jug when they used it - and not contemporary art representing those things.  ¶ 5:50 PM