To adopt a more sympathetic approach (which can be useful and fair), we need to go back to first principles and ask: what’s so good about not showing what things look like? The central intention in abstract art is to get directly to emotion and to bypass representation. Like music, abstract art is best interpreted as echoing, or giving a form to, certain of our inner states or moods. Some might be relatively straightforward, like ‘calm’ or ‘anger’, and others will defy easy definition in language. It is therefore not very helpful to say: this painting doesn’t look like anything. It is true
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