From Kepes’ Language of Vision (sorry about the erratic OCR formatting):
Man is a dynamic being struggling individually and SOCiallY for surV1val,
To survive he must orient himself to his surroundings° He must measure
and order the visual impacts of his environment to correspond Wlth
nature. He must communicate his findings to his fellow men for the
mutual reinforcement of their actions. He asserts himself in the material
world by means of his sensory equipment as well as his thinking process.
Thus the control of nature includes the domestication of nature through
the eye, the visual assimilation of space-time events.
Visual images are tools for this progressive control of nature. Each new
visual conquest creates a new horizon, a new frame of reference, a new
starting point for further development. As the aspects of nature change,
man needs to readjust these tools and develop new uses for them. As there _
is progress of the thinking process, so also there is evolution of sensory 3
comprehension. The development of vision leads not only to further ,
understanding of nature but also to the progressive development of
human sensibilities, and thus to wider and deeper human experiences
So, this system of layers abstraction in vision, from sensory to symbolic has a utilitarian origin, but it is, Kepes says, still extensible an available to exploit in art. That is, to impart non-utilitarian meaning.