Reflection 1

            My first response to the question of whether representation is an essential part of what artworks do is that representation truly is an essential function of artwork. Even if an artist set out to create a work that represented nothing, he or she would not be able to do so. Everything he or she could possibly think to express necessarily has to be based on something he or she has experienced, seen, or felt, or a combination of multiple things. If an artist tried to represent nothing in his or her art, the artwork he or creates would at the very least represent the artists’ desire to make something based on nothing. If art could exist without representing something, this would imply to me that there could be no real desire or motivation behind it. Furthermore, I think this concept is really implicitly accepted in the way we commonly think of what is an artwork versus what isn’t. For example, most people would think of a painting of a tree as a work of art while most people would not think of an actual tree as a work of art. Many people might think that trees are beautiful, but they would not consider a tree to be a work of art in the same way as a painting. In general, people may think of nature or other people as beautiful but differentiate the type of beauty from the beauty of art. I think this is because something like a painting represents something other than itself while real things do not. Even if one believes certain religious things about nature and its purpose, when one looks at a tree on the side of the road, the tree is just a tree. No matter how beautiful one thinks the tree is, the tree doesn’t really represent something other than itself. A painting of a tree, however, represents something other than itself. In the most basic sense, it represents a tree or the general idea of a tree. It also represents the artist’s feelings and inclinations that would have led to him or her choosing to paint a tree. It represents something within the artist. I think the idea that artworks represent something is at least a part of the way we distinguish what is art from what isn’t.

            I also think representation is an essential function of art in a slightly different, but related, way. No artwork can depict something that doesn’t already exist or something that the artist hasn’t come across. Yet, artists, like all people, come across so many things and ideas and don’t necessarily choose to convert to use all of them in art. If an artist does something like paint flowers, he or she is deciding that those flowers have some type of significance that should be communicated through art. If the artist didn’t see some type of significance of any kind, he or she wouldn’t create based on it and would instead choose to create something depicting or inspired by one of the many other things he or she has encountered. If what the artist is depicting in his or her art didn’t inspire something in the artist to distinguish it from everything else, the piece of art would never be created. In this sense, representation and what the art represents is an essential function of artworks.