Upon eating the last Lindt truffle I received for Valentine’s Day, I found myself left with an empty, heart-shaped box. Red, naturally, with a cellophane window offering a tempting view of an empty gold tray complete with empty, heart-shaped wells where each truffle once sat in symmetry with each other before they fell victim to my sporadic cravings for chocolatey goodness.

And, no doubt like many artists before me, I took apart and eyeballed that box and its flimsy inner tray for far longer than it could ever be worth, poking and prodding and thinking, ‘Gee, I bet I could make art with this.’

Thankfully, after about five minutes, I did the sensible thing and threw the box in the bin. The plastic bag containing eight carefully flattened red foil Lindt wrappers is still sitting here between the lamp and the printer, because obviously I can use those to make art. Really.

What the hell is going on here?

The fact is, there’s something in what I’ll dare to call the creative disposition that leads one to see significance in all things, no matter how shit they might be. The heart-shaped box in particular has a wealth of connotations that both embrace and undermine the kitsch of the object itself, in much the same way that Flaubert preferred tinsel to silver because tinsel has all the qualities of silver and the added element of pathos. These are the readings that matter in an increasingly object-oriented visual culture, because they speak universally to viewers on both an intuitive and learned level. Even if your audience isn’t in on all the layers of meaning, the diversity of possible readings that you gain from a contradictory object just makes that experience more engaging, and ultimately more rewarding.

So yes, the heart-shaped box is utterly tempting. So why did I throw it out? Well, because it’s just been so done. Hell, you go to Janice McNab’s profile at her representing gallery, doggerfisher in Edinburgh, and the first painting that’s going to greet you there is an oil painting of the inside of a box of chocolates.

While I was playing with my own empty chocolate box, hers was the first name to pop into my head, but my instinct tells me she’s not the only one to tackle this imagery - certainly the only one I can think of who manipulates the object as a Scottish-inflected landscape, but still part of a wider interest. And knowledge of her work with this object, and of related projects on the whole, is what has condemned my own chocolate box to a piecemeal existence between the recycling bin and the green cart of compost-friendly debris.

What is more worrying is that I can think of other artists who would have gone the other route, kept the silly damn box, and proceeded to bundle it into the studio for an appointment with some mixed media monstrosity-in-progress. Maybe there would have been some poetry involved, or glitter paint. I’m really not sure.

Frankly, I’m not entirely sure what the end point of this post was meant to be. Let’s just say, if you kept the heart-shaped box, please, for the love of all that is holy, go visit more art galleries. Please.

Thank you.

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