Reflection 1

Conventionally for the lay person, art is thought of in terms of how well it reflects its subject. A good artist is one whose work looks much like the actual object - the landscape, the person, and so on. However, throughout the art history, artist have toyed with the idea of representation and to what extent they stay true to the form of the objects they are painting. Still, it could be argued that representation - in whatever form, distorted or not - is still not an essential to a work of art.

Many artist in contemporary art focus on the medium and have no real consideration for representation. Many of Jackson Pollock’s canvases do not boast a single representation, but rather they are experiments in a horizontal canvas and by extension sweeping brushstrokes with more freedom. To say that artworks are necessarily representational is to discount one of the world’s most renowned contemporary artists.

And it is not just Pollock, many artists both before and after him have given their talent to exploring medium over exploring representation. Mark Rothko, whose work “No. 61” is at the bottom left, is one such artist. His most famous works are simple color blockings that place heavy weight on the richness and complexity of color.

Similarly, other artists use techniques such as canvas staining. This another experiment with hues, as the stain seeps into the canvas and produces a different color than a paint would. Helen Frankenthaler, whose work is on the bottom right, practiced this technique, and some of her works are simply a product of how the unsealed canvas stains.

But before continuing, it is necessary to ask where representation is coming from in a work of art. Up until this point, I have been operating under the assumption that the only representation that can be found in a work of art is one that the artist intended on and created. This notion, however, can be problematic. In the example of the Rothko, through knowledge of art history and interviews conducted with Rothko himself, one can find that as I have said his works are not meant to be representational. By that I mean, he did not intend to paint those three rectangles to model three rectangles he had seen before. However, if you were to ask a person what this was a painting of, they would likely say three rectangles stacked upon one another. Obviously, they have surmised a representation in this painting without Rothko meaning to evoke it.

On the other hand, if you were to ask the same of the Frankenthaler on the right, they would be hard pressed at first to find a clear way to portray the stains on this canvas. That is, they would have trouble until they were told the title, “Mountains and Sea”. Once told this, they would point out certain high points they perceived as mountains and certain low and appropriately colored things as the sea. These two examples call into question and problematize this idea of representation in art. On the one hand, it could be meant by the artist (like in “Mountains and Sea”) and subsequently forced into the viewer’s perception. Or it could not be intended by the artist (like in “No. 61”) but meaning and representation can be forced on the work by the viewer. Perhaps it is the lay definition of representation that problematizes the notion, but nonetheless as things stand, representation cannot be an essential function of artworks.