Abstract art is often dismissed as a scam, but I think it genuinely expands how we see the world. A Rothko painting doesn't show you a landscape, yet it can make you feel something raw that realism rarely touches. Last week at a gallery, I watched a teenager spend ten minutes in front of a canvas of layered blues, just staring. Who's to say that didn't change her more than a classical portrait would? If art's purpose is to provoke thought or emotion, then abstraction does that job as well as any technique.