How to Understand Abstract Art

In this post I try to explain abstract art - those kind of paintings that are just some shapes and squiggles that don't represent anything, and they look like a kid drew them or that they can be done by anyone in Paint.

My approach is to explain one of Piet Mondrian's paintings, but first I explain what abstraction is. I do that by taking a short text (any Monkey Island fans out there?), that is full of descriptions, and abstract it over and over again, until there is barely anything left of the original. Then I explain how that same process works for graphical arts, and what it all means.