Figurative vs Abstract Art: What's the Difference?
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La Chocolaterie Art Gallery · Art Education
Figurative vs Abstract Art
What's the Difference?
Two visitors stand in front of a painting. One says "I can see it's a figure." The other says "I see only color and shape." Both are right — and they might be standing in front of the same painting. The line between figurative and abstract art is less fixed than it sounds, and understanding the spectrum makes looking at contemporary art much more interesting.
Clear Definitions
Figurative art depicts recognizable subjects from the real world — people, animals, landscapes, objects. The word "figurative" specifically refers to human figures but is used broadly for any art that maintains a relationship with visible reality.
Figurative doesn't mean photorealistic. A painting can be highly stylized, expressionistically distorted, or simplified to near-abstraction while remaining figurative — as long as there's a recognizable real-world subject that anchors the work.
Examples: Dino's cat paintings, Lucian Freud's portraits, Balthus's interiors.
Abstract art doesn't represent recognizable subjects from the external world. Instead it works with color, form, line, texture, and spatial relationships as its primary content — these aren't stand-ins for something else, they're the thing itself.
Abstract art can be purely non-representational (nothing real is referenced) or semi-abstract (forms suggest but don't depict the real world). What it avoids is literal representation.
Examples: Kandinsky's compositions or Rothko's color fields.
The Spectrum Between Them
In practice, figurative and abstract aren't binary opposites, they're poles on a continuous spectrum. Most interesting contemporary painting sits somewhere between them, maintaining some relationship with the visible world while working with significant abstraction.
Realism / hyperrealism
The most figurative end, painting that aims for photographic fidelity to the real world. Every detail rendered accurately. The skill is in the faithful representation. Technically demanding; often emotionally neutral.
Impressionism
Recognizable subjects rendered through the impression of light and color rather than precise detail. The water lily is there, but it's experienced rather than documented. Still firmly figurative but with significant abstraction of treatment.
Expressionism
Real-world subjects distorted to express emotional or psychological states. The face is recognizable but deformed by what the artist is feeling about it. The boundary between subject and artist's inner state becomes permeable.
Semi-abstraction
Forms that suggest the real world without depicting it, the memory of a landscape, the sense of a figure. You might feel "this is water" or "this is a city street" without being able to point to any literal representation.
Geometric abstraction
Shapes, lines, and colors with no real-world reference, purely formal. Mondrian's grids. Malevich's black square. The most deliberately anti-representational painting tradition.
Gestural abstraction
The trace of the artist's physical action in paint, brushstrokes, drips, marks. The reference is to the human body and its gestures rather than to the external world. Often emotional and immediate in effect.
What Each Approach Does Well
Figurative and abstract art each have genuine strengths, things they can do that the other approach can't, or does less well.
What figurative art does well
Narrative and connection to shared human experience. Recognition, the pleasure of seeing something known rendered in a new way. Psychological depth through portraiture. The anchor of the real world that some viewers find essential for emotional engagement with art.
What abstract art does well
Direct emotional communication without narrative mediation. Visual experience that doesn't require the scaffolding of a subject. The freedom of color and form to operate at full intensity without the viewer's attention being divided between subject and form. Sustained discovery over repeated encounters.
There is no hierarchy between figurative and abstract art. Great work exists across the entire spectrum. The question is never "is figurative better than abstract?" but "does this particular work achieve what it's attempting?" which requires looking at the specific work, not at the category it belongs to.
How La Chocolaterie's Artists Relate to This
Dino's art is strongly figurative
Cats, Paris scenes, bodys, recognizable subjects rendered with warmth and wit. Firmly figurative, with a painter's understanding of how representation can carry emotional weight.
PA, semi-abstract
Human figures are not perfectly realistic, but they still retain a connection to real forms. The sensation of people atmosphere is the primary content; the specific scene is secondary. Works across the figurative-abstract boundary.
Which Do You Prefer? (And Why It Matters)
Understanding your own preference is useful both for collecting and for the experience of looking. Most people have a genuine inclination toward one end of the spectrum, and understanding why helps you engage more effectively with the other end too.
If you find abstract art frustrating: try approaching it the way you'd approach music, not asking what it depicts but noticing what it does to you physiologically and emotionally. The "meaning" isn't elsewhere; it's in your response.
If you find figurative art limiting: look at how the greatest figurative painters use the real-world subject as the occasion for an entirely painterly investigation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a painting be both figurative and abstract?
Yes and most interesting contemporary painting occupies exactly this space. A painting can show a recognizable subject (making it figurative) while treating it in ways that emphasize formal and color relationships over literal depiction (making the approach abstract).
Is abstract art harder to understand than figurative art?
Different, rather than harder. Figurative art is initially more accessible because you can identify the subject, but genuine understanding of why a figurative painting is remarkable often requires as much looking as abstract work. Abstract art removes the easy foothold of subject recognition, but the emotional communication it achieves can be just as direct once you stop trying to decode it.
Does figurative art sell better than abstract?
In the accessible and mid-range market, figurative work does tend to sell more easily the subject gives buyers an immediate point of connection. At the high end of the contemporary market, abstract work is extremely strong. At La Chocolaterie, both approaches sell well, Dino's figurative black cats is our most accessible entry point, while Andrea's more abstract compositions attract collectors specifically for their non-representational quality.
See Both Approaches at La Chocolaterie
Free entry, works from $20, artists often present.
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March 2026 · La Chocolaterie Art Gallery · 64 rue Saint-Louis en l'Île, Paris 75004