Thinking Like an Insider

I've caught myself thinking like an insider artist, theorizing about what I do.

The idea I come back to over and over is the notion that symbols or ideas (as visually represented) can be used in art as purely decorative (or perhaps purely "artistic") items, just as basic shapes combined with color, etc., are used decoratively in fashion, furniture, architecture, wallpaper and such.

The reception of the kind of art I'm thinking about here would require responding to the thought-items only up to a certain point, i.e., not taking them fully as thought items to be understood or made sense of. The whole composition would not cohere in a thought message but just as an overall impression.

I wonder if this line of thought has appeared anywhere in the insider art world.