I think the points made here fit interestingly alongside the comments on @jasonw22’s original post.
I’m not for or against abstractness in any meaningful sense and I have very little to say about artistic merit, meaning, what art really is about or any of that stuff. It’s clearly deeply personal, both for artists and art observers/appreciators/people who are exposed to it/whatever you want to call it.
I also think Mr. Greer isn’t really going on against abstract art in specific - he’s using it as an example of how people can hide behind a style - and I DO think many people hiding in the more abstract worlds of art are in fact doing precisely that - not to take anything away from those who aren’t or the various styles that can be perceived as abstract themselves. Some of you are going a little too far towards throwing the baby out with the bathwater by assuming that’s what he’s saying.
I do agree that there are many artists (and a general public at large) who are afraid of being CHALLENGING with their work (or being challenged by it). I also believe that “challenge” (as in, difficulty finding/uncovering “meaning” behind an artwork or performance) is another thing that people with limited vision hide behind - “make the end user work hard to figure out whatever meaning I might have put there, because I’m too tired to actually put the meaning there” is, I’d argue, not unheard of in the so-called artistic world. Both things are true, yet there remains excellent art in all styles/genres/categorizations/non-categorizations/etc…
Perhaps people can “challenge” themselves to not knee-jerk about the criticisms of abstract art and focus on the real point which is: our culture does exhibit signs of having difficulty with confrontational issues in the arts* - whether that’s new or not new or increasing or not increasing is not really relevant - and this is perhaps especially not a good time for that to be true. Perhaps we can find good ways to rise to the challenge, to find new means of expressing human emotion, desire, experience, in ever-richer fashions without losing the subtle, perhaps a return to vibrance is as important as a deep dive into nuance? Perhaps they’re not on opposite ends of a fictitious spectrum?
I’d be much more interested in discussing the social and human relevance of this topic, which is I think more at the core of what Greer is trying to get to, than in discussing whether there is or isn’t merit in abstraction, ambient-isms, or whatever other subtle, sublime, or not-strictly-formulaic art forms out there.
@emenel, I especially liked your comment about the failure of concept or abstraction - what does it mean to fail in this way? How can we recognize and build on those failures and the lessons in them to become better (better what? better artists? better communicators? better listeners? better storytellers?..)? What IS excellence, and should we be inspiring each other to pursue it? How do we find it?
And perhaps most relevant to topics you all seem to love to discuss here: how can you be EXCELLENT at abstract art forms? Is there a standard for this? Can there be one? Should there be one? How do you relate to the concept of excellence at all? 
I’m very happy we have a forum where we can ask these questions non-ironically and really dig into things sometimes. As an artist who recognizes my own lack of excellence (according to my own standards at the very least) I’m always inspired by those who exhibit what I experience as excellence - which is a very wide, deep, and polymorphic field - and I find it worthwhile to pursue each day a little bit of that same spirit in myself. I’d love to see how we can use the power of discussion to sharpen our craft collectively.
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- Edit: when I say ‘confrontational issues’ I’m not limiting this to politics, but including the entire range of human experience that is not culturally ‘in fashion’ at any given moment, context, place, or audience. Take this in a very broad sense, I’m not trying to be political here in specific.