For art to be an effective instrument of social betterment, it needed to be understood by as many people as possible. But it was not a matter of simply articulating images; it was the "true" art behind the image that was deemed important. Art can be many things and one example may look quite different from the next. But something called "art" is common to all. Whatever this art thing was, it was universal; like the scientific "truth" of the Enlightenment. All art obviously possessed it.
Some artists went in search of "art". From an Enlightenment point of view, this was a search for the "truth" or "essence of art", and was carried out using a sort of pictorial reasoning. The first step was to strip away distracting elements such as recognizable objects which tended to conceal or hide the art thing; an example would be Wassily Kandinsky.
MODERN ART TO DESIGN (Vincent van Gogh, March 30, 1853-July 29, 1890)
