Hi Greg

You write: “But I am not, as you guessed, interested in defining art or amateur activities.”

I’m not sure if you’re suggesting that defining art is an “amateur activity”. If you are, there seem to have been some fairly highly qualified and impressive amateurs in the field.

But I was not really asking you to define art (no easy task, as we know). I was just asking if a scene similar to Las Meninas roughly sketched by someone of no artistic talent (me, for instance), would generate what you call “HOTs”.

It seems an important question. If HOTs can be generated by Velasquez or by Joe Blow, then we don’t really need to be talking about Las Meninas, do we? Any (framed) picture, good or bad or even woeful, with a frame in it would do the trick.

Derek A