- Abstract art uses shape form, colour and line to create a composition which typically exists with a degree of independence from references in the real world. - It relies on the assumption that features are sufficient to trigger a perceptual experience. - Abstract art relies on top down processing (See also [[Two Pathways of the Visual System]]) and puts greater emphasis on [[Interpretation as a Creative Process]]. ---- Abstract art dares our visual system to interpret an image that is fundamentally different from the kind of images our brain has evolved to reconstruct. Abstract art, like Cubism, put an end to what the art critic Carl Einstein called “the laziness or fatigue of vision. Seeing had again become an active process [[Reductionism in Art and Brain Science]]