A language system for abstraction.
ArtGraph is a language system for encountering abstract art.
Six dimensions read the painting. Three fields read the encounter. The ArtGram gives visual form to the painting’s reading. The EncounterGraph records the moment of the encounter.
Abstract painting has no language. The moment it has words, it stops being abstract. So the language has to be abstract too.
To find something, you need words to look with. Before ArtGraph, abstract art had none, so every search ran through what a listing records: size, palette, artist, style. None of that is what moved you. ArtGraph gives you the words for what did.
Developed by the painter, author and entrepreneur Ritu Raj.
250+ paintings scored · 42 by other hands read on the same dimensions
TWO VOCABULARIES one for the painting, one for the meeting
Abstract Dimensions 6
SIX that read the painting
Texture
Contrast
Form
Abstraction
Color Range
Palette
All six live in the ArtGram, plotted as a shape, and the palette is also the shape’s own color. Every name on it is one of the six.
Encounter Fields 3
THREE that read the encounter
Space
Transformation
Feeling
Nothing about these can be drawn. They need a room, and a person standing in it. A painting has dimensions; an encounter has fields, which is why the two are never one count of nine.
The six readings of one painting, plotted as a shape and filled with the painting’s own pigments, with the color that governs at the center. The same at any size, on any surface.
Sindoor Field · ArtGram.Sprig
How the ArtGram is made →The same ArtGram, inside the three fields that carry what happened in front of the work. One person, one painting, one afternoon — dated, placed, and built to be sent to somebody who was not standing there.
Rangoli in Permanence · EncounterGraph, 09/05/2026
What a meeting leaves →ARTGRAPH ENGINE
- ArtGraph Engine. The core. It reads paintings in six dimensions and encounters in three fields, wrapped in the LLM Engine, which gives it language.
- 1ArtGraph Concierge. A visitor says what they are looking for, and the Engine finds the painting in any collection it serves.
- 2ArtGram. Gives visual form to the painting’s reading. One level out sit the Shape Abstracts.
- 3EncounterGraph. Records the moment of the encounter, read in three fields.
- 4ArtGraph Share. Sharing the ArtGram and the EncounterGraph.
- 5ArtGraph Abstractor. Takes in any catalog and hands it to the Engine to read.
- 6ArtGraph Catalog. What the Engine returns once it has read a collection, shown as a hexagon.
On rituart.com, the ArtGraph Concierge is branded Find Your Painting, and the collection it serves is the ArtGraph Catalog.Rituart.
WHAT ARTGRAPH IS MADE OF
Abstract Painting
where everything starts
DIMENSIONS
The language. Six dimensions read the painting, three fields read the encounter.
TAXONOMY
The argument. Why every available way of sorting abstraction describes the object and calls it finished.
ARTGRAM
The notation. The painting’s reading in visual form, identical at any size, on any surface.
ARTGRAPH ENGINE
The infrastructure. A catalog goes in; one that can be read comes back.
ENCOUNTERGRAPH
The meeting. The ArtGram inside three fields that carry what happened in front of the work, dated and placed.
CONCIERGE
What it is for. Say what you are reaching for, instead of scanning a wall of thumbnails.
ArtGraph Share
The painting, with its ArtGram and the EncounterGraph of the meeting. Built to be sent to somebody who was not standing there.
See ArtGraph Share →The left column is what exists, each one holding the one before it. The right is what makes it. A painting goes in at the top and comes back at the foot with all of it — which is why this is not a pipeline.
Questions
Does abstract painting have a language?
No, and that is the point: the moment an abstract painting has words, it stops being abstract. What ArtGraph proposes is not a language for the painting but a grammar for the meeting — six dimensions that read the work, three fields that read the encounter between the work and a person, and the ArtGram, which carries the reading.
How do you describe an abstract painting?
Not by saying what it is of. ArtGraph reads six dimensions of the work — Texture, Form, Color Range, Palette, Contrast and the Abstraction Quotient — and three fields of the encounter: Space, Transformation and Feeling.
What is an ArtGram?
The painting’s reading in visual form: the six dimensions plotted as a shape, filled with the painting’s own pigments, identical at any size on any surface.
What should you say about abstract art instead of ‘I like it’?
Say what the surface would feel like under a hand. Say how far the color travels, and whether one color governs. Say whether everything in it depends on being where it is. Those are observations rather than verdicts, and two people can disagree about them usefully.
Is there a vocabulary for talking about abstract art?
There has not been a shared one. Criticism describes a painting after deciding what it means, and provenance and price describe everything except the work. ArtGraph is an attempt at the missing layer: six dimensions of the painting and three fields of the encounter, each defined once and scored against 250+ paintings.