Heraldry (Posts and Spreads) 2013

Jo Baer created this oil on canvas artwork titled 'Heraldry (Posts and Spreads).' The artist here questions systems of value, perhaps those upheld by the institutions of art themselves. Baer was a minimalist painter and this late work plays with recognizable historical symbols, like coats of arms and heraldic animals, skulls and burial stones to evoke a sense of established power. We see how this image creates meaning through visual codes and historical associations. The question is, what do they mean now? Were these once meaningful status symbols drained of their power? Baer made this image after a career spent challenging the art world establishment and it seems to ask how images can accrue meaning or lose it. Is she asking us to think about how value is created? Or about who benefits? The role of the historian is to examine these questions using a wide variety of research resources. Only then can we begin to understand art's meaning as something that is contingent on its social and institutional context.