This book examines how we perceive and understand abstract art in contrast to artworks that represent reality. Philosophical, psychological and neuroscience research, including the work of philosopher Paul Crowther, are considered and out of these approaches a complex model is developed to account for this experience. The understanding embodied in this model is rooted in facet theory, mapping sentences and partially ordered analyses, which together provide a comprehensive understanding of the perceptual experience of abstract art.

Paul Hackett works at Emerson College, USA and is an academic visitor in the philosophy department, Oxford University, UK. He is a psychologist with research interests that cross other disciplines, including philosophy and neuroscience with a concentration on categorial behaviour.