"Mark Smith said 'Art is a verb' and I agree. The surface goes on last but is the thing you see first. Surface is everything. It shows the politics of the object's making. Transparency of materials + process is paramount. In business it's called 'the point of diminishing return'. In art the end happens much later because the goal is not making the most product for the least money. The 'return' in art is the work itself. So we call it the 'quitting coeficient' [sic]. It's when we give up + move on.