Thank you for the insightful reply! I knew I was being kind of glib & dismissive to classical painting when I wrote the notecard...but like you mentioned I think the average person who is going to an art museum and getting mad at abstract art is not thinking this in-depth about the classical stuff in order to defend it - it "deserves" to be "art" more because it's instantly recognizable. I do enjoy when you can see the presence of more interpretive aspects in any painting (The Ambassadors comes to mind as an obvious example).