It is my sense that art historians and some critics put far too much emphasis on chronology rather than the fact that the art is just there in space and time to comment, be seen enjoyed or challenged. In the book Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong it is said that traditional means of display, such as arranging works chronologically, prevent us from engaging with Art on a personal level. "Art can be a tool, and we need to focus more clearly on what kind of tool it is--and what good it can do for us."

As an artist in the 21st-century and prior, I have often found myself not thinking in terms of sketching we're having an objective and making my works but instead creating pieces filling in some past thought or executing for the future. I can often find myself asking what does a given work of art mean to me? Do I like it? Is it relevant or beautiful or ugly and will let me in the same to an audience 200 years from now. Does my Canon printer make better copies than that Albrecht Duer etching? Does that mean the same when I see that same image reproduced in that coffee table book on the artist?