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. . . it's not so much what's on the canvas, but how one feels when one looks at it, and what it says about the culture . . .

This is where you and I part company.

Characterizing or evaluating art on the basis of an individual, subjective emotional reaction is analogous to the liberal notion that what IS or what is DONE is not important, it's just how you FEEL. What that winds up meaning is that there are no standards of craftsmanship or technical facility, just "art is whatever you can get away with."

It's irreproducible, unverifiable, and (forgive me) about 99 and 94/100ths B.S. And I cannot agree that it is "art" in any true sense. Divorcing feeling and intellect from the basic craftsmanship that traditionally forms the basis of "art" is what got us into all this ultra-pseudo-intellectual mess in the first place.

You have a bunch of jurors, mostly located in NYC and LA, who award money that isn't theirs to artists based on "standards" that are tied to absolutely nothing but the jurors' own high opinions of themselves and their associates in their rarified circles. It's incestuous, it's totally unrelated to any standard of the good, the true, or the beautiful, and it's IMNSHO a complete waste of federal and foundation money.

Granted, many of the people involved in the art world are not people with whom we'd wish to pal around with, or invite as dinner guests into our homes. Thank goodness very few ever run for public office.....and won't be making our laws and public policy.

As it has been, and always will be, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

And doesn't the critical concept of art lie in its intrinsic value? Finding something in the work that speaks to each of us individually, that awakens in us an awareness of beauty, spirit, completeness, a dream, and so on?

While great art works "speak" to more people, one can find relevance in any work of art.

An artist captures one's attention through the way he develops a concept, crafts the technique, and then executes his idea.

One, or all, of those gives a work of art its monetary value to a collector.

Abstractionists and Cubists relegated their canvases to thumbing their noses at the Masters----exhibiting a deliberate and complete absence of sentimentality.

Lichtenstein and some of the Warhol oeuvre appeal at an intellectual level as much as for what's on the canvas as for technique, and the artists' choice of execution........as in Warhol's silk screens.

Working with stencils, Lichtenstein developed a technique using rows of dots that mimicked the commercial printing patterns used in the production of comic books. The resemblance was further emphasized by his palette of bright primary colors replicating the chromatic range of comic books.

Quite remarkable, even though I would not necessarily admire, or purchase such works.