ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses abstraction in artistic and scientific images. In the first place, it distinguishes between depictive images, which abstract from some visual properties of the objects they depict, and genuinely abstract images, which entirely abstain from depicting. In the second place, it describes four ways in which genuine abstract images convey content: conventionality, indexicality, exemplification, and expressivity. The chapter shows that, although genuinely abstract images do not depict, they do not always entirely abstract from the visual properties of objects.
