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The art is not just the thing - it's impossible to experience it in isolation of it's context which you've constructed from your experiences and feelings and knowledge as well as how the art is situated and framed to you. This might be the point of the Fountain.

So I think it's impossible to separate the work for the artist if you have knowledge pertaining to them. Michael Jackson was an incredible talent, and his music is significant in my memories of my own childhood, but it hits different for me now. If we played his music to an alien freshly arrived from Mars they might think it's perfect, but it never can be again for us.