Post-Spiritual Abstraction

Being absorbed in visual abstraction has been, traditionally, a very good way to get some quiet. Whether besieged by a once again noisy culture, a relentlessly beckoning internet, or just our own yammering minds, there is plenty of reason to long for wordless, lumen-less art—for obstinately mute and immobile paintings and sculptures without namable content.
Alas, it is not to be. As is evident in a spate of recent exhibitions and publications, including modern and contemporary art scholar