Still, figuration in Western architecture continued to be confined to those spaces provided in the architect's or builder's plan.

WSJ: Enlightenment on an Intimate Scale | The Adinatha Temple at Ranakpur | Masterpiece by James S. Ackerman

But as he neared his 80s, the French modernist best known for his groundbreaking experiments in color, perspective and figuration pressed onward.

WSJ: Matisse's The Thousand and One Nights in Pittsburgh

He abandoned narrative content, figuration, spatial illusion and the norm of verticality.

ECONOMIST: American sculptors: The heart of the matter | The

He reasoned that there can be no such thing as non-figuration.

NEWYORKER: Shapes of Things

Just as Kandinsky turned his back on figuration, so did the atonal composers of the early 20th century, led by Arnold Schoenberg, abandon tonal harmony, the fundamental ordering principle on which all Western classical music had previously been based.

WSJ: The Seductive Lure of Abstraction | Sightings by Terry Teachout

Figural and symbolic reliefs are not high overhead as in the Parthenon or Chartres Cathedral, but at one's own level so that one is immersed in the visual experience most of the piers are little more than twice my height, and the figuration begins immediately above the socle (base).

WSJ: Enlightenment on an Intimate Scale | The Adinatha Temple at Ranakpur | Masterpiece by James S. Ackerman