You might as well get one thing straight . . . I’m not an abstractionist.
—Mark Rothko to Selden Rodman, 1957

It has long been one of the curiosities of abstract art that so many of its practitioners have denied that they were in fact abstract artists. To have created works of art that were seen to be “merely” a mode of abstraction has been, for these artists, a considerable vexation, and some have gone to great lengths to—in their view—set the record straight on this question. But whether they actually succeeded in this project of denial or only added further impediments to our understanding of abstract art—including their own—remains a matter of debate.

It is a debate, moreover, that is certain to acquire a renewed momentum now that abstract art has lost its radical status and has passed into the hands of the art historians as a subject for research and interpretation. It is when an art no longer commands the distinction of radical novelty, and therefore no longer serves as a model for a new generation of “advanced” artists, that the task of explaining its “meaning” becomes especially problematical. A change in taste occurs, and the old aesthetic loyalties no longer obtain with the force they once did. There is a need to understand what it was about this art that held so many gifted artists in its thrall and persuaded so many connoisseurs of its importance. At the same time, however, there is likely