"On the one hand, if [as Frank Stella says] the work of art is a nonreferential object in which 'what you see is what you see,' then it would seem that the representation and what it represents implode and become identical. On the other hand, Stella [also] claims, 'I do think that a good pictorial idea is worth more than a lot of manual dexterity.' From the later point of view, the painting appears to re-present the idea in a way that presupposes oppositions between concept/work, creation/production, conception/execution, and form/matter. Throughout the history of Western metaphysics, such binary oppositions are always hierarchical. Stella, like his philosophical and theological precursors, privileges the first term in each dyad over the second: the concept is essential, its appearance accidental."
Mark C Taylor Confidence Games 2004 p.41