The maker and the receiver of the work often pass for two a priori distinct parts. But there are works suggesting that both parties might be locked in a mutually anguished and absurd co-dependency. To be involved in someone else's game (including the artist's game), might arouse feelings of unease and irritation, or even be countered with resistance or rejection. But does this not fail to recognize the fact, unnerving for some people, that being in society means being involved? Ignorance, the "desire" to ignore and not acknowledge one's implication, is hardly an option.
To be a spectator has little to do with the "natural mood" of a person. Rather, the spectator transacts operations such as looking and making sense (which includes his or her "preferring not to"). In Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (1976) Pierre Cabanne asks the artist: "You have also said that the artist is unaware of the real significance of his work and that the spectator should always participate in supplementing the creation by interpreting it." While answering obliquely Duchamp took the point further: "Posterity is a form of the spectator," he said, adding "It's the posthumous spectator (… and therefore… posterity) that will decide, because the contemporary spectator is worthless…". Posterity—spectatorship in general—results from acts of valorization (or denial of valorization). Such acts on the level of reception bring the "aesthetic" into being. How artists decide to approach or manipulate the relationship to the spectator is a different question.
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