Chimps and 4 year olds may make pretty decorations, but for me they are not profound art nor are they worth $32,000. But gullible fools can be found everywhere. And we all have different tastes, and I may be proven wrong.
This is where we start to part company. Much of the celebrated Modern art, while allegedly having something to "say", does an entirely inadequate job of saying it. The more abstracted paintings become, the more impossible it becomes for a viewer to extract any content beyond sheer emotionalism, and Congo's paintings contain that. I find Kandinsky devolving toward Mondrian's mere divisions of space, and Pollack as inarticulate as that chimp. At the current end of that trail, you have rotting cows in museum showcases.
I know that all great art has had something to say, not only about its subject matter, but about the art that preceded it. Content can be the simple beauty of a landscape or a young lady. But whatever the subject, it is delivered with the unique vision of the particular artist.
My daughter, as I previously related, just graduated from college with her BFA, - one of her pet peeves was the "artist's statements" that were required for everything she produced. Of course, the profs expected those statements to be dripping with political correctness (and feminism, since she is a female). She, OTOH, would rather have just let her work stand on its own merit.
I personally am inclined to like art that tells a story - I guess it's one reason why I appreciate illustrators, and why, in my own work, I have sometimes found myself working on subject matter that is rather narrative.
You can have all the content in the world but if you don't effectively communicate it that content may as well not be there. Art needs to be visually appealing before any content can be ascertained. (Who's going to look for any possible meaning in something as ugly as a Picasso?).
For example, you say that the portrait of Ambroise Vollard shows that he (Ambroise) is intelligent. I don't even see prove that he's in the picture. How can something that doesn't even look like anything have meaning? I'll never be able to see value in the more modern art styles (cubism etc) as they aren't pretty enough to bother looking at and if I can force myself to look at them they have no meaning. They are content nil. (to my eyes at least)
Further, if the "content" has to be explained to the casual passer-by then that content is only a figment of the artist's (delusional) imagination. Somewhat like a book written totally in punctuation marks. It has no meaning without having the author there to explain it. What good is that?
At least the chimp painting is a good conversation piece. Chimps aren't expected to be good painters so any painting by a chimp looks good