There is an ongoing dialogue between those who appreciate modern art and those who don’t. The detractors most commonly argue, “I could take a canvas and splatter it with paint like Jackson Pollack, or paint simplistic stripes of color like Barnett Newman, or paint an entire canvas white like Kazimir Malevich, and call it art.” Thus, diminishing the works’ merit, relative to the proposed ease in producing them.

The customary defense is, “But you didn’t.” Perhaps most noteworthy is that he or she didn’t do it first.

It is not the aesthetic significance that often justifies a modern painting’s value in the annals of art, but the creation or concept of something new. 

Given a malleable piece of wire, we could all form it into a paperclip.

But we weren’t the first to do so.