'Not an Illustration but the Equivalent': A Cognitive Approach to Abstract Expressionism

This work is an attempt to bring the latest findings of cognitive psychology to bear on the interpretation of Abstract Expressionism. The heuristic models developed by contemporary cognitive scientists to describe human perception and cognition_particularly the claim that our physical experience of the world both creates and is filtered by image schemata and that even our interpretive and intellectual constructs originate in metaphorical projections from such physical experiences_are used to articulate a new interpretive framework to address the interpretation of New York School abstraction.