welcome to our
SATURDAY EVENING POST
February 15th, 2025
Being confronted with a canvas awash in intense colours and abstract shapes can sometimes be disconcerting even for seasoned art professionals. While some are captivated by the pureness of visual ambiguity and sense of possibility, others are unsettled by the absence of definitive figures or narratives. Many question themselves: should I like this work? How do I even begin to engage with this work? Is there a “right” way of engaging with the work, and how do I even begin to articulate what I am seeing and how it makes me feel? This tension stems from a centuries-long tradition that favoured realism and clearly legible forms, whereas abstract art uses deliberate strategies of elusiveness, such shapes, colours, and gestures that challenge conventional interpretation to invite viewers into a territory where meaning is fluid, subjective, and inexhaustible.
A framework for understanding why abstract art can feel daunting is the notion of “cognitive closure”, which describes our instinctive drive to resolve ambiguity as quickly as possible. This drive once had evolutionary advantages, helping humans identify threats or resources without delay, like hunting for a viable food without being eaten, but it can become a limiting factor in art appreciation. Faced with Agnes Martin’s faint lines on near-blank canvases, for example, viewers may initially believe something might be missing, while others discover a meditative quality in the quiet space. Arshile Gorky’s biomorphic shapes and vibrant hues likewise illustrate how resisting the impulse for instant clarity can reveal a more rewarding interplay of form and colour. When we recognize our predisposition for quick resolutions, we can choose to slow down, embrace uncertainty, and engage with the work on its own terms, a process that can yield either constructive engagement or a hasty dismissal, depending on how strongly the viewer clings to the desire for an explanation, which may or may not exist.
Though much of abstract work lack obvious subject, a successful work carries with it potent emotional resonance that emerges in the viewer’s subjective encounter. For instance, Cy Twombly’s Bacchus series, with its swirling red strokes, exemplifies how even a non-figurative painting can suggest movement, tension, and visceral energy. Rather than simply conveying a fixed scene, the painting compels each viewer to project personal memories, moods, or inner states onto the piece, an experience that aligns with John Dewey’s philosophy that art is an event shaped by participation and interpretation.
John Dewey’s perspective on art as an interactive, evolving event resonates strongly with these challenges posed by abstraction. In Art as Experience, he writes about how aesthetic engagement unifies thought, feeling, and sensorial input into a continually unfolding conversation between artwork and observer. Because abstract art supplies fewer fixed reference points, it asks the viewer to assume a more active interpretive role. Rather than extracting a single, definitive message, each individual stitches together personal reflections, emotions, and insights to shape the painting’s meaning, highlighting the collaborative nature of artistic experience.
Although the modern turn away from strict figuration may appear abrupt, historical and cultural contexts clarify its gradual emergence and reception. Early movements that defied realism, such as Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism set the stage for more radical expressions of abstraction. Early critics labelled these efforts as “childish” or “lacking technique,” however, the exposure to such stylistic devices over time has allowed for the eventual celebration of their formal innovations. Willem de Kooning’s Excavation exemplifies this shift: initially ridiculed by some, it came to be regarded as a key example of Abstract Expressionism’s bold energy.
The viewer’s physical presence further enriches our understanding of abstract works. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a French philosopher and founder of phenomenological thoughts, dismantles the idea that seeing is purely optical. Physical posture, spatial positioning, and bodily movement all influence how we understand an artwork. He challenged the notion that we are just disembodied rational observers. Instead, he argued that perception is a dynamic, our bodies, movements, and sensory inputs all shape the way we engage with our surroundings, including works of art. When viewing a painting or sculpture, Merleau-Ponty believed we do much more than passively receive visual information. For example, if you stand in front of a massive canvas, your experience might be influenced by the painting’s scale and by how you physically feel in the gallery. A large, immersive work might prompt you to move closer, step back, or even look at it from an angle, affecting your sense of colour, texture, and composition.
Traditionally, some schools of thought treated perception as if the mind looks “through” the eyes at the world, with the body serving merely as a vehicle. Merleau-Ponty turned this idea around: he showed that our body is not just a passive conduit. It contributes to the act of seeing by involving our kinesthetics sense, how we feel when we bend, stretch, tilt our heads, and so on. The interplay of the body and the artwork fosters a richer, more holistic encounter. Sam Gilliam’s draped canvases illustrate this principle by demanding that viewers move around and under cascading folds of painted fabric, or a David Spriggs installation invites the viewers’ active movement around his work. Such acts of navigation transform viewing into a full-body experience.
A related concept is “horror vacui”, illuminates why areas of negative space can cause unease in some viewers. Horror vacui is a Latin phrase meaning “fear of the empty,” used in art history and aesthetics to describe the unease people sometimes feel when faced with unoccupied or unadorned space. This can manifest as an urge to fill every available surface with images, patterns, or ornamentation, as though blank areas themselves create anxiety. Historically, cultures and styles that exhibit horror vacui tend to prefer densely packed designs or motifs, leaving little white space unaddressed.
In medieval Europe, illuminated manuscripts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels or the Book of Kells exemplified an almost obsessive dedication to ornamental detail. Monastic scribes and lay artisans filled every margin with intricate lettering, flowing scrolls, stylized foliage, and shimmering gold leaf. Rather than relying on sparsely decorated backdrops, they aimed to captivate readers by weaving colour and complex patterns into every available space, partly as a show of devotion, partly to enhance the text’s preciousness and visual impact. In Islamic art, lavish decorative art and architecture, featuring geometric motifs, calligraphic flourishes, and arabesques became integral, reflecting both a deeply held spiritual emphasis on unity and an aesthetic preference for continuous and interlaced forms.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Art Nouveau also prioritized ornamental richness, inspired by organic shapes such as twisting vines, floral whiplash curves, and undulating lines. Posters by Alphonse Mucha, for instance, or glasswork by Emile Gallé often filled the composition with intricate, swirling elements that avoided large unadorned areas. This preference for dense, nature-based decoration paralleled, in certain ways, the shift that occurred during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) in China, which often saw a move toward more elaborate visual culture compared to the generally more restrained and pristine styles of the preceding Yuan (1271–1368) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties. In imperial Chinese painting and object design, particularly for courtly or elite patrons, sumptuous ornamentation and the liberal use of gold underscored status and grandeur. This tradition of heavily embellished forms persists in many aspects of contemporary Chinese taste, where highly decorative art or design that “fills” the available space, rather than leaving it open or minimalist remains popular, thereby contrasting with modern Western movements that embraced abstraction or conceptual minimalism.
By contrast, modernist and minimalist movements in Western art took an opposite stance, deliberately exploring empty space. In a painting by Mark Rothko, for instance, large swaths of colour dominate, but to some viewers, these expanses can appear “empty.” Such works provoke the viewer to engage more slowly and thoughtfully, noticing minute shifts in hue or texture. For those accustomed to highly detailed scenes, this emptiness can feel uncomfortable, sometimes prompting an urge to seek hidden shapes or deeper meanings that are not overtly provided.
Within an abstract or minimalist context, horror vacui highlights the tension between comfort in visual fullness and the contemplative potential of emptiness. Some viewers interpret blank areas as incomplete, while others experience them as reflective spaces that open up new avenues for thought or emotion. When an artist harnesses emptiness, whether it is in a sparse composition by Agnes Martin or in the geometric simplicity of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, they challenge the viewer to find meaning beyond literal depiction. In doing so, they also challenge any lingering discomfort with silence or stillness in the visual field.
Perhaps, for some, what is shaping our response to abstraction is the museum or gallery setting itself. White walled spaces, and even a lack of human interaction, can amplify a sense of exclusivity, sometimes intimidating even experienced viewers. Introductory texts or guided tours offer historical context, yet an overabundance of direction can inadvertently constrain or confuse personal exploration. In the case of abstract art, which relies on open-mindedness, over-prescriptive explanations risk overshadowing the viewer’s intuitive engagement.
Ultimately, the very characteristics that make abstract art challenging, its ambiguity, refusal to present definitive subjects, and paucity of immediate interpretive cues are also its principal strengths. By encouraging us to confront our cravings for quick answers and nudging us to linger in the unknown, abstraction fosters more deliberate looking, deeper introspection, and a willingness to engage with aesthetic complexity on multiple levels. For artists who have not already embraced an abstract approach, creating such works can be far more demanding than initially imagined. With no external points of reference, the process becomes an inward journey, requiring the artist to tap into and truly feel what resides within. In this sense, abstraction becomes an act of revealing and sharing one’s inner self, a raw and vulnerable expression.
Current Exhibition
A message from our Insurance Sponsor for this exhibition:
At Acera Insurance, we’ve been serving the fine arts community for decades. Partnering with the world’s leading insurers, our advisors provide comprehensive, customized solutions to protect your valuable collections.
Contact: Farzina Coladon