The kinds of images that abstract art creates are obviously quite difficult to define. Add to that the growing popularity of the elusive term ‘virtual’, and it becomes tempting to use this term to describe also the elusive nature of abstract images. And yet, according to The Virtual Space Theory, most forms of abstract art are actually not virtual at all. This may seem surprising given the popular use of the term, but this is quickly sorted out once the terminology is clearly defined.
In an earlier post I proposed a distinction between several uses of the term ‘abstract’ and their relation to the notion of virtuality. The main conclusion was that calling an image ‘abstract’ might just mean that its visual contents are distilled or hard to identify, yet it could still present them in visual terms of physical objects in a space. However, one of the most common uses of the term ‘abstract’ is to describe images that do not present a likeness of the physical world at all, but which are rather made specifically as a flat arrangement of matter on a surface. In other words, such an image is no longer pictorial, but rather a non-pictorial image.
Therefore, in order to address the relation of abstract art and virtuality, we need to first resolve the difference between pictorial and non-pictorial images in that respect. According to The Virtual Space Theory, whereas pictorial images can be interpreted as creating virtual places in virtual space, non-pictorial images can not. This does not mean that someone viewing such an image could not interpret its visual pattern in terms of space, but what is seen in it would only be the viewer’s personal interpretation. For example, given a painting of Jackson Pollock, one viewer might see a castle in its pattern of paint, while another might see an elephant (look at it long enough and you will see ones too 
).
This is opposed to the visual contents of pictorial images, which are very similarly interpreted by anyone who has grown up in a civilization that makes common use of images. There can be no serious argument as to what is seen in the visual pattern of the following image by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. There might still be minor differences of interpretation, but surely not as many as in the previous case.
According to The Virtual Space Theory, then, the castle or the elephant of the non-pictorial image are confined to their viewer’s mental space, which is strictly private, and in sharp contrast to the public nature of virtual space – as demonstrated by the grand ancient forum of Piranesi’s pictorial image, which we can all see. In other words, pictorial images create virtual places, whereas non-pictorial images do not.
Now we can return to the question of abstract art. Since it is a form of art that is only marginally concerned with creating pictorial images, then as a general rule we could say that its contents are not in virtual space, and as such, they can not be considered to be virtual. They may be elusive, they may be non-concrete, they may be non-identifiable – but none of that necessarily makes them virtual.
There could be exceptions, of course. One of them is the particular area of interest created by the undefined field that lies between pictorial and non-pictorial images – which is the topic of the next post.
