more sentimental problems

So I was talking to this guy who was telling me that he was pushed very hard in an artistically conceptual direction at school. His work showed it, but I liked his work very well. I had an idea: When we force our minds to grow in new directions and encompass new ideas we gain broader tastes. But as a result we also have more limited or specialized tastes. So maybe we could try to bend our minds around very so called traditional things, and discover deeper things then we saw the first time around. Maybe you can still write a good love song with 3 chords- perhaps its not about the chords. Maybe western art isn't impossible to find engaging- maybe 'western' isn't the point. In fact, maybe a study in "sentimentality" is needed. Perhaps the feeling based (as opposed to idea or concept based) arts can be explored in a more psychological way, and be found more valid. I think its a bad idea to associate "feeling" with "easy". Sure we all feel stuff, but we all can also teach our minds to do gymnastics- its just as easy. So maybe Fredrick Remington isn't pure nostalgia. Why is that so hard to consider, when a performance artist shooting himself in the arm isn't? We keep trying to see though the fluff, but isn't the point of trying to see through something to see something through it? You can only tear down so many things and you find the same thing: something that can be debunked on the same grounds that we debunk Thomas Kinkade. Sentimentality. Now I don't like T Kinkade. But maybe I should learn to respect him on HIS terms- I've bent over backwards for everyone else. There is still such a thing as bad art; but it should have less to do with genre and more to do with intent.