The second way abstraction does this (avoids the rules of mimesis) is related to the first, in that the first (the removal of linear time as a basis for the subject of the painting) is often a function of the second, which is this: the omission of human figures from the canvas. For not only are human figures absent in abstract painting, but also the very idea of a human perspective is done away with. Or, anyway, the notion that such a perspective is a necessary component of a painting’s internal order disintegrates. So that a viewer will come to understand, if they consider such a painting’s implications, that, although the painting has been created for humans, so to speak, its concerns are so removed from what might be described as ordinary human experience, or things ‘of this world,’ that they (the viewer) cannot bring to it the sort of questions they would bring to a figurative or representational painting, without finding themselves at a loss.