Art critic Robert Pincus-Witten coined the term "epistemic abstraction" for the art movement that began simultaneously in both New York and Jerusalem around 1968. The term refers to art pertaining to the nature of knowledge, hence how a viewer understands basic physical truths. The New York epistemologists Mel Bochner and Dorothea Rockburne are concerned with the visual examinations of Pythagorean theorem and the golden mean ratio, respectfully. Israeli artist Neustein's work concentrates on a comprehension of the fold, the tear, and the cut. In his use of these methods for the manipulation of paper, Neustein makes the viewer retrace the artist's process- imagining a restraightening, realigning, and mending. The beholder is also forced to contemplate what is hidden under and behind the visible artwork.

Neustein's construction during the formative years of "epistemic abstraction" (1968-72) were leaden gray, devoid of color. It was only in 1978 with the beginning of the Weimar series that he began to employ color, named for the failed Republic during which the violent palette and brush work of German expressionism conveyed the artists' frustration, Neustein's homage to Nolde, Kirschner, et al. is best expressed in his own words as an "attempt to paint portraits of paintings in their own debris." The adjectives "fragile," "torn," and "impermanent" are frequently used to describe Neustein's construction and apply as well to the work of other Israeli members of this movement- notably Pinchas Cohen Gan and Benni Efrat. These Israelis opt for destructive physical processes such as tearing, erasing, scratching, or as with Efrat, optical negation of the physical surface through light. The contrast between their nihilistic expressions and the constructive and more mathematically analytical techniques of their American counterparts. The Israeli artists' vandalization of their own material apparently echoes the precarious war-torn plight of the Jewish state.