Paintings in Stores (Visual Agnosia)

I think it's great that stores like Nordstrom's are letting artists exhibit in their stores. I always notice the art, but I’ve noticed no one else does. Fine art, when placed in a commercial context is 'camouflaged' by the retail displays.

I once had an installation idea where waiting room chairs would be placed under large abstract oil paintings in a gallery, to suggest that people in waiting rooms typically view the art on the walls as a decoration to fill a space, and are just ignored. This is what is happening at Nordstrom's. If there was a microwave oven in a waiting room, you’d wonder why it was there. The microwave oven would be attracting the attention, not the art. A microwave oven could be appropriated as a readymade in a gallery and would fit right in.

There always has to be sufficient difference (or similarity) in contexts in order to create enough cognitive dissonance to get someone to react to something. Recently, I was taken aback at a grocery store that placed packages of detergent beads side-by-side with similarly packaged foods. This creates cognitive dissonance: Laundry detergent and a bag of candy are typically not stored together, particularly on the heels of the rash of people intentionally ingesting them.

The takeaways, which all relate to the effects of 'slippage' between fine art and commercial art:

Don't make things so similar or different that they get confused; Don't place things so different side-by-side that they become invisible; Don't forget the ways people have cognitive blind spots.