Suppose I don't "get" the above painting: no matter how much time I spend viewing it, this painting does not "speak" to me, and the emotional response it elicits from me is no richer than what I feel when looking at a brick wall. Now lets imagine that one day it is discovered that Rothko secretly studied optics - and not just at the high school level, but all the way down to the most advanced quantum mechanics and electrodynamics of his time. (He kept his superior mathematical talents in secret from the rest of the world.) To everyone's astonishment it is revealed that Rothko's paintings (including the one pictured above) exploit previously unknown macroscopic effects of certain quantum mechanical properties of light - the properties which can be understood only with the help of very abstract mathematical constructs. Fortunately, I happen to know enough about this stuff to dig into Rothko's amazing investigations until I uncover that at the heart of Rothko's discovery lie very clever applications of theorems from operator algebra and non-commutative geometry.
Upon grasping this deep, abstract truth behind Rothko's Orange and Yellow painting, I lean back in my chair, light up a cigarette, close my eyes, and (with a knowing smile on my lips) whisper "I got it" ... And then it dawns on me (and hopefully on you too, if you've read this far) that whatever it is that I "got", I still didn't "get" that painting!
