VISUAL ARTS stract art are posited by these artists on the ground that their mode represents the highest realization of the sup posed prime function of art. It is equally important to point out that practitioners of geometrical abstraction have themselves conceptualized different functions for art. According to Gleizes and Metzinger the function of painting is to^aarrange on a two-dimensional surface, lines and flat masses denoting planes which represent subjective responses to concrete retinal stimuli. ^A Work of art should induce a sensation of a mathematical order, and the means of inducing this mathematical older should be sought among universal means', declared Le Corbusier and Ozenfant. To Kasimir Malevich, 'the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling , . . enduring true value of a work of art resides solely in the feeling expressed'. Naum Gabo observed, (. . . it [Constructivism] has revealed a universal law that the elements of a visual art, such as lines, colours, shapes, possess their own forces of expression independent of any association with the external aspects of the world; that their life and action are self-conditioned psychological phenomena rooted in human nature; that those elements are not chosen by convention for any utilitarian or other reason as words and figures are, they are not merely abstract signs, but they are immediately and organically bound up with human emotions.' To Piet Mondrian art was an intellectual pursuit to build a parallel and compensatory reality. Thus though all geometrical abstract art is built up with straight lines and angles; elliptical, oblong or parabolic curves; rectangles, squares, triangles - shapes and flat coloured masses denoting planes - it aims neverthless at performing different functions. Contrary to what the votaries of non-historical conceptualism, like E.M. Gombrich, and historical conceptualism, like Suzi Gablik would like us to believe, there are other more important causes which govern the genesis of style in art than mere individual conceptions. if we were to consider some cases where, in spite of similarities in conception about the function of art, styles differ and where, despite contrary conceptions about the function of art, styles show .striking similarities, we would arrive at a reasonably satisfactory estimate of the supra-individual factors which govern the major stylistic preoccupations. Take the case of similarities in conception about the function of art. In the art of different cultures and different times we occasionally find a conspicuous emphasis on formal values of art — even at times to 36 July-September 1983