A language for abstraction.
Abstract painting is the only art we have agreed to stand in front of without agreeing on what to say. This is the missing vocabulary — dimensions, one mark, and a catalog scored against both.
ArtGraph is a proposed language and discovery system for abstract art, developed by the painter Ritu Raj. It uses six dimensions to describe a painting, three to describe a viewer’s experience of it, and a mark called an ArtGram to carry a painting’s whole reading as visual notation.
266 paintings scored · 42 by other hands read on the same dimensions
TAXONOMY
The argument. Why every available way of sorting abstraction describes the object and calls it finished.
DIMENSIONS
The language. Six read the painting, three read the encounter, and only the seam is shared.
ARTGRAM
The notation. One mark carrying a whole reading, identical at any size, on any surface.
CONCIERGE
What it is for. Say what you are reaching for, instead of scanning a wall of thumbnails.
ENGINE
The infrastructure. A catalog goes in; one that can be read comes back.
Abstract Dimensions 6 + 3
SIX of the painting
All six live in the mark. Five plot as shape; the sixth is the shape’s own color.
THREE of the encounter
Space
Transformation
Feeling
Nothing about these can be drawn. They need a room, and a person standing in it.
Each of these rests on the one before it.
- 1The argumentA painting of a chair can be described by saying chair. An abstract painting has no such word, and no shared way to describe what happens while you stand in front of one — the encounter. This is an attempt at one.
- 2The languageSix words for the painting itself. Three for the encounter. Together, the Abstract Dimensions.
- 3The markOne small shape carries a whole painting’s reading, at any size, the way music has notation. We call it the ArtGram.
- 4The engineReading one painting is a judgement. Reading a whole collection the same way is the Abstraction Engine.
- 5The useSay what you are reaching for in your own words and let the language find the match. That is the Concierge.
- 6What you leave withA page of your own, holding what you said and the works that stopped you. The ArtGraph Card. It travels further than this site does.
- 7What answers backWhat people actually report, and the analysis where the framework is caught being wrong.
And the language changes when people require it to.
rituart.com is the paintings. This is the language. The book is the argument at length.