At the end of the nineteenth century, when painting gradually freed itself from the obligation to represent the recognizable physical world, abstraction was charged with conveying the spiritual and inutterable idea. Returning to this idea as a critical approach, The Spiritual in Art rethinks abstraction in terms of its intended spiritual content, devoting special attention to Wassily Kandinsky, Frantis\fek Kupka, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp, and Jackson Pollock. Profusely illustrated and thoughtfully written, this book confronts certain current critical assumptions about abstraction with a stimulating argument for content.