"Art" at its root means "skill"
"Art" has held this meaning for 2500 years... until fairly recently.
it has long been my opinion that most modern "art" amounts to an immense practical joke, played by those without talent upon those without taste.
that said, all works of "fine art" are abstract - while the work of art is itself a concrete thing, the content of that work represents some other thing to some greater or lesser degree, but never, EVER encompasses the totality of the reality of that other thing. The work of the artist is to simplify, to choose what to represent and what to ignore, within the practical limits of his medium and skills, in order to effectively communicate to his audience the essense of what he is representing.
This is the true meaning of abstraction in artworks.
The value of that artwork should rest on the skill of the artist in accomplishing that goal. If there is no skill, it is no work of art.
I shall not go into the fact that there exist definite elements of language in these "fine arts" - derived entirely from how the human mind gathers and interprets data - whose effective use can be quantified. I shall merely state that pointing this out to the strutting imposters calling themselves "modern artists" drives them stark gibbering mad.
Right you are. Thanks, KP