What Is Abstraction?

This text addresses the question of abstraction, one of the most significant and influential schools of criticism, by looking at three interconnected projects. The first argues that developments within abstraction have rendered the traditional theoretical and philosophical understandings of abstraction inadequate. The second develops the theoretical and philosophical issues in relation to contemporary abstract work, and the third demonstrates in what way these theoretical innovations allow for the reinterpretation of the tradition of abstraction.