It's rather a ridiculous notion that painting could carry any meaning that isn't simply the individual reaction of the viewer on encountering the work itself. It's just a flat surface, sometimes with texture, sometimes not, sometimes with things glued to it, sometimes not, the variations are limitless. We have an instinctive response to a work but often this changes with time as we learn about other works from the past and present. We like something today we shall dislike tomorrow and vice versa, we learn to appreciate was once was unintelligible to us perhaps from a conscious effort to learn about such works. Why? Why would we like to learn to appreciate what is at the outset unattractive to us? There are as many reasons for this as there are people, but we could simply put it down to good old curiosity. Any paintings presented to us always has certain things in common, particularly the fact that the artist wants to show us something he has made, and preferably engender some sort of emotional response in the viewer, for a multitude of reasons. Beyond this is little else. Thus the mind of the viewer is what matters and the contents of the painted surface is only of secondary importance.
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