Hi Brian, that’s an interesting response. I perfectly agree that many people’s frustration with art lies in the way it is talked about.

For me, I have learnt most about art when the ‘expert’ encourages me to look more closely. For this reason, I like to write about art with a method of close-reading, and I hope to guide the reader’s eye to details which may not be obvious on first glance. I hope to achieved this in this article.

I wrote a more general “How to look at paintings”, which you may find agrees with your perspective more: https://medium.com/s/story/how-to-look-at-paintings-9e8145f32a54