How apt this picture is. to describe the person painted. and to illustrate my point.

so when i was at the university art gallery seeing the collection of works by john cage (new music composer, pupil of arnold schonberg), merce cunningham (modern dancer), dove bradshaw and william anastasi (artists), i suddenly thought of the objection people ofte made against modern art. "hey, so what is it? is it like a woman or something?" at that moment, i finally figured out the problem with that objection. a portrait can be both a likeness and an art work. it is the likeness that makes the portrait a likeness, it's not the likeness that makes the portrait an art work. it is the creative element that makes the portrait an art work. similarly, there are other creative things that don't look like anything, or don't mean anything. it doesn't mean that they are not art works. they are merely not portraits of things.