Art has never been the sort of creature to hover at the threshold, waiting for approval, it storms in, rearranges the furniture, and leaves you wondering why your sofa suddenly feels like a metaphor for mortality, the expectation that art should request permission is charming in its futility as if a painting required a stamped form in triplicate before daring to hang itself on the wall. Imagine Beethoven submitting a memo before unleashing the Ninth Symphony, “Dear listeners, kindly prepare for joy.” The absurdity is the point. Art does not murmur “May I?”; it declares “Here I am,” and dares you to look away. Picasso did not pause mid cubism to check if the audience was comfortable with fractured faces, he fractured them precisely because comfort was irrelevant. To demand that art ask is to confuse it with decoration, decoration seeks approval, art seeks confrontation, it thrives on provocation, on unsettling the viewer, on refusing domestication. Asking would ruin the surprise, dilute the sting and reduce the sublime to wallpaper. Obviously, art doesn’t ask, because if it did, it would cease to be art. It would become furniture, background noise, a tasteful accessory to taste, and art, thankfully, has always been far too unruly for that.
