Absolute Abstraction

Krauss makes reference to Suzi Galik’s Progress in Art where she defines three distinct artistic periods: “visual representation prior to the discovery of systematic perspective, the second, beginning with the Renaissance, defined by the mastery of perspective, and the third, that of modernism, heralded by the onset of abstraction” (248). Therefore, what might come after abstraction? Are mathematical patterns and cognitive coordination that final stage of art or might Krauss suggest artistic periods as cyclical, perhaps that they’ll return to Renaissance works?

The most confounding claim made by Krauss is the following: “There is, in Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes, as they say, a method in this madness. For what we find is the “system” of compulsion, of the obsessional’s unwavering ritual, with its precision, its neatness, its finicky exactitude, covering over an abyss of irrationality” (254). Earlier in her article, Krauss alludes abstraction to a childlike practice, simple but covertly complex. Is it not, therefore, meant to be appreciated for exclusively for its simplicity and not forcibly reduced to a “logical” process of observation?