I think there is an element of nihilism about, but I don't think most artists feel their work is meaningless.
Architecture should be dedicated to keeping the outside out and the inside in.
Of course, I did lots of what would be called graphic design now, what used to be called commercial art.
Art is man's distinctly human way of fighting death.
Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable.
I think it has other roots, has to do, in part, with a general anxiety in contemporary life... nuclear bombs, inequality of possibility and chance, inequality of goods allotted to us, a kind of general racist, unjust attitude that is pervasive.