[hunter112]

OK, then you pay $1.5 million for the thing, that much money would buy me a nice wine cellar. There's something I like that not everybody can fully appreciate, either.

[Rembrandt_fan]

You wrote, "OK, then you pay $1.5 million for the thing, that much money would buy me a nice wine cellar."

Wine appreciation is as good a comparison to art appreciation as one is likely to find, I suppose. Just as someone (hopefully a non-alcoholic) develops a taste for fine wine, I would argue that anyone can learn to appreciate the works of abstractionists like Kandinsky or Frankenthaler with only a short period of study. 'Appreciate' in this sense doesn't mean they would necessarily grow to 'like the flavor' of abstract art, but they would have a greater understanding of the motivations involved in the making of it, and recognize why those kinds of nonrepresentational works have such appeal to others.