A nicely turned phrase uncovered in the latest MODERN PAINTERS magazine (who I gave up on after finding a de-shirted Devendra Barnhardt on the cober - what is this, SPIN?, but who have recently begun to redeem themselves since their move to New York, though that editor needs to use a less-smackable photo) discussing Vidya Gastaldon’s sincere and loopy works on show at the Swiss Institute: carapace of irony and declines this armor.

As in:

“Although delicately drawn iconography of hippy and new-age culture has had cachet with younger artists in the past few years, it is usually encased in a carapace of irony. The young, Geneva-based, French artist Gastaldon - here for her first US solo - declines that armor: her craft-intensive drawings, objects and videos are entirely sincere in their loopy, visionary zeal.”
(Modern Painters, December 2006-January 2007,p. 138)

I’ve often called it the crutch of sarcasm. Regardless, it is something to lose. Better to be brave and sincere than safe and sarcastic. Post-irony is mimeticism with an excuse.