Truthfully, one can never really know how sincere a painter is—be it abstraction or figuration. What does stand on its own though is the art itself—and whether it is able to convey a new thought or emotion to its viewer that is removed from the mundane experience of everyday life. However, Abstraction, like every other art movement, has a socio-political context. The Occidental definitions of abstraction have evolved from a move towards an absolute and pure form, that our experiences can be distilled down to the basics. Painters like Juan Miro and Wassily Kandinsky began from figuration, where forms were reduced to squares and circles, and in Piet Mondrian’s instance, grids that looked like an aerial view of a city. However, others like Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman believed that

Abstraction should be free of associative messages. Having said that, if Rothko’s colour field of blue can transport the viewer into the icy glacial climbs of the Himalayas or

Newman’s dune-coloured canvas evokes the feel of a vast desert, then there is nothing the painter can do about it. Most artists, like Prabhakar Kolte and Mehli Gobhai, believe that art is open to multiple meanings. One may also find the beautiful calligraphic script of the Japanese or Urdu a form of abstraction though this inclusion into the realm of high art is rather recent and often a contested ground.

Demystify art, e-mail