Cézanne - Van Gogh - Monet. Genese der Abstraktion. 2. edn. Diss. Basel 1998

Do abstract paintings still make sense and if so what do they mean? By reducing the paintings to simple square blots as by Cézanne, to lines as by van Gogh and color traces as by Monet their meaning is fundamentally questioned. But by interpreting these compositions as effective forces or rather affective stimuli a new and different meaning becomes apparent. Landscapes are no longer introduced but made real in the aesthetic experience. Therefore aesthetics or rather aisthetics (perception) can be defined as a notion of experience and knowledge. Thus the notion of an image gets a new understanding: it can be described as an "energetic system".