When I learned about Picasso in school, I heard that his representations of people were meant to consider the planar nature of the canvas superimposed as form.

When I learned about Picasso in school, I heard that his representations of people were meant to consider the planar nature of the canvas superimposed as form. Then we learned about the waves of critics, the warping of perspective, of explanations. > I would say that a 'non-abstract' packet would be one that would contain all possible state of the system. Abstraction can refer both to the process of generalizing and enumeration of state, so this is where we diverge on terms, a slight leaning in either direction. > But, I would say that an 'abstract' packet would be one that contains the least amount of structure and metadata for the primary information to be passed. For me to understand that, I have to imagine every possible state that the defined abstraction can manifest as, and only then can I feel as though I understand the abstract form (but not really because infinity). The definition gets defined. All enumerations of state up to a scope are generated. The definition is checked to make sure every enumeration fits under the associated expectations of the definition. I don't understand the idea of taking away until it is not the thing I once called it. In one state I called it a thing. Then I smashed it to bits and called it something else. They are contextually dependent, there is a bigger picture of which these things are defined in. When I called it a thing, I called it that thing because I compared it to a bunch of other things. When I smashed it, I think smashing it does something. But it doesn't have to. When I was in philosophy class, my professor asked me what I would call the overhead if he sat on it. I said "a chair". He said "you must have a lot of trouble communicating with people." > What if the artist takes away so much that it just becomes a Platonic form? Can it still communicate information (emotion)? Ooof. That one might take my entire life to figure out, in a humorously, ironically sad and overly verbose way. I surely hope not. > I'm just an amateur artist though - I'm sure an academic could shed more light. I have heard this guy has important opinions : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Greenberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Greenberg > Maybe it's not a good analogy - I'm just coming up with something on the fly. No. I learned a new way to call things abstract that makes sense to me in computer science from you. The usage of the word 'abstract' in CS has been bugging me for a long time. There's also all the goop under the form. A word can be like a case for which to hold an idea. So can books.