Botticelli to Braque: Masterpieces From the Scottish National Galleries

The abstract in art was attained when the artist was still looking at things from the classical perspective but was coming up much closer to what he was seeing, so close that he could no longer make a pure representation of what he was seeing, he could only make it abstract.

Paul Cézanne made a painting in 1904, two years before he died, which he named "The Big Trees".

Seeing the Cezanne painting this morning at the deYoung I couldn't see the wind, but I could feel it in the trees. I was only looking at a small part of the picture I was seeing, a detail, which caused me to look even more closely at the achievement of abstraction.

I'd like to think I was looking as closely at the Cezanne painting as Mondrian was looking at the paintings he was making when he finally became Mondrian.