5. Two Types of “Abstraction” Abstracting From Non-Representational

6. Abstracting From… Paul Cezanne, Views of Mont Sainte Victoire, late 19 th century-early 20 th century.

13. Court-Trained Painters

15. Zhang Zeduan, Section of the Spring Festival on the River, Northern Song, late 11 th Century CE

16. “ The Untrammeled Class” The Literati

17. “ Ah, but a total lack of resemblance isn’t an easy thing to achieve!” --Ni Tsan, 14 th century.

18.  Court Artist Literati Artist 

19. Yu Jian, Mountain Villiage in Clearing Mist, 1250 CE

20. Yu Jian, Mountain Village in Clearing Mist (Detail) , 1250 CE

21. Shitao, Landscape, 1642 – 1718.

22. Shitao, Landscape , 1642 – 1718. Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), (detail), 1950.

24. Xu Wei (1521-1593) Xu Wei, Grapes, 1521-1593

27. Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 28 , 1912.

28. Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VIII, 1923.

29. “ Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposefully, to cause vibrations in the soul.” -- Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

31. “ [I]n plotting out the rationale of Modernist painting I have had to simplify and exaggerate. The flatness towards which Modernist painting orients itself can never be an absolute flatness. The heightened sensitivity of the picture plane may no longer permit sculptural illusion or trompe l’oeil, but it does and must permit optical illusion. The first mark made on a canvas destroys the literal and utter flatness, and the result of the marks made on it by an artist like Mondrian is still a kind of illusion that suggest a kind of third dimension. Only now it is a strictly pictorial, strictly optical third dimension. The Old Masters created an illusion of space in depth that one could imagine oneself walking into, but the analogous illusion created by the Modernist painter can only be seen into; can be travelled through, literally or figuratively.” -- Clement Greenberg, from “Modernist Painting,” 1960.

32. Josef Albers, Homage to the Square , 1954-1956.

33. Frank Stella, Ileana Sonnabend, 1963.

34. “ The essence of modernism lies…in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself—not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in the area of its competence. Kant used logic to establish the limits to logic, and while he withdrew much from its old jurisdiction, logic was left in all the more secure possession of what remained to it.” -- Clement Greenberg, from “Modernist Painting,” 1960.

36. Jackson Pollock, Number 1A 1948, 1948.

37. Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), (detail), 1950.

39. Hans Namuth, Jackson Pollock workin Hans Namuth, Jackson Pollock Working , film still, 1950s.

40. Hans Namuth, Jackson Pollock working on Autumn Rhythm, film still, 1950.