As an artist, I found An Art of Our Own to be a truly great book by an inspiring, deeply informed writer! If you're serious about learning the fundamental purpose of genuine abstraction, pay no attention to the ridiculous and shallow review from the Library Journal. The quality or value of writing, scholarship and art is subjective, which should be an obvious fact.
Consider this: regarding the great pioneers of early abstraction (Kandinsky, Mondrian, Malevich etc), the "private symbolism" referred to by the Lirbary Journal critic is far from being a merely personal thing, but rather springs from the collective unconscious and is in truth the foundation of all things Universal. As established by Frazer (The Golden Bough), Campbell (Hero With a Thousand Faces) and David Fideler (Jesus Christ, Sun of God), we have common instincts, desires, motivations and beliefs that can and are expressed through symbolism or metaphors.
How these universal ideas and feelings came to be expressed succinctly through the evolution of painting and abstraction is masterfully documented by Lipsey and establishes the initial impetus for modern art. This is essential knowledge for artists interested in learning the traditions from which abstraction transformed representational images and gave birth to an art of our own, as opposed to forms dictated by church, state or the marketplace.