Claes Oldenburg, Soft Toilet, 1966, mixed media construction

When an artist uses texture they conjure up our past tactile experiences and the visual associations that we make to the experience of touch. Actual texture is texture that we can actually touch, as in a piece of sculpture, and implied texture is an associative idea created based on what we have seen when we experienced a texture. Implied texture is used by painters to give us the idea of a texture. Subversive texture is the purposeful creation of a contradictory textural experience.