Perhaps the time is right to retrieve Abstract Illusionism from the dimming corners of
recent art history and to see what it has to say about aesthetic tropes and mass
persuasions. Artists, like politicians, can manipulate us to accept any illusion.
They ask us to suspend disbelief and to blindly follow. We can play the artist or the
lemming at the bar, but ultimately, we know that painted brushstrokes don’t fly, that
the world is not flat, that climate change is real, and that none of it is a joke.