- 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. - [[Reductionism in Art and Brain Science]] 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”