“I think a poor life is lived by anyone who doesn’t regularly take time out to stand and gaze, or sit and listen, or touch, or smell, or brood, without any further end in mind, simply for the satisfaction gotten from that which is gazed at, listened to, touched, smelled, or brooded upon.  We all know, however, that the climate of Western life, and particularly of American life, is not conducive to this kind of thing; we are all too busy making a living.  …Abstract pictures and pieces of sculpture challenge our capacity disinterested contemplation in a way that is more concentrated and, I daresay, more conscious than anything else I know of in art.”

–Clement Greenberg, “The Case for Abstract Art,” Saturday Evening Post, August, 1959.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, oil on canvas, 1653.  Metropolitan Museum of Art