theoretical rather than practical
an abstract science
said of art: having little or no element of pictorial representation
said of a noun: naming a quality, state, or action rather than a thing; not concrete
detached from any specific instance or object
an abstract entity
Abstraction has been a prominent mode in 20th-cent. art, in various diverse forms – splashily painterly, tightly geometric, and so forth. But it is disputable how abstract that abstraction actually is. Within the most resolutely non-objective images some reference to landscape or figure often lurks. It may be impossible to construct a work of art which does not echo some aspect of the world — Martin Gayford
abstractly adv
abstractness noun
[medieval Latin abstractus from Latin, past part. of abstrahere to draw away, from ab- + trahere to draw]