In his famous novel Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne informs us that the hero Phileas Fogg (said to have lived in London in 1872) was a stickler for certain things: "On this very 2nd of October he had dismissed James Forster, because that...

. Process by which allegedly we form concepts on the basis of experience or of other concepts. On being confronted with red things, each of which has many other properties, we abstract the redness and so form a concept of red. Having done the same with...

A generalization, an idea, or a concept. Abstract ideas form the basis of theory; they are concepts and generalizations that relate to, or provide explanation of, specific and concrete phenomena but are not the same as...

A prop or support that, by means principally of its mass, is able to resist the forces of movement in another mass, such as the wall of a building or...

Abstraction is the process of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather...

BG: Is this actually an abstract picture or a representational picture? AD: It raises that question, automatically, when you juxtapose a title with some sort of depiction. The assumption is that if the title is something very specific, like "The Beach House," the...

Abstractions of philosophical thoughts on various topics are presented. These include quotes from Alfred North Whitehead on 'silly questions,' from John Kenneth Galbraith on political commentary, from J. Robert Oppenheimer on the position of electrons, Zen Mondo on thought and thinking, Stephen Spender on...

The Geometry of Hope: Latin Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, an exhibition at N.Y.U.’s Grey Art Gallery, poses two interesting questions: What characteristics identify art as provincial? And what does hope have to do with making art? Organized by the Blanton...

The refrain of “I Like ’Em Big and Stupid,” singer and comedienne Julie Brown’s little-remembered 80’s-era pop exegesis on female desire, came to mind while I was looking at Jonathan Lasker’s paintings at Cheim and Read Gallery. Mr. Lasker’s work is big and stupid—obvious and...