On Representation Of Art

Two kinds of ways to express one's emotion, i.e. expression and representation are drawn abstractly from different types, styles and ideals of works of art. Representation tends to express one's emotion through the lifelike and loyal description, while expression lays stress on direct expressing of the subject's emotion or by ways of hyperbole, transforming and abstracting to express one' emotion. In Part One of this paper, firstly, representation is discussed in the grand category of the ways of art expression of human; then, from this logical starting point, through the combing of the history of representation and by comparison with expression the features of representation such as concealment of the subject's emotion, intuition of art imagine, following to logic, etc, are concluded. The idea that there is no absolute meaning of expression and representation, which are mutual lodging and reciprocal depending, is further studied.People don't have full recognition of representation because of historical reason. Lack of features of subjectivity, artistry and expression are their limitations. The lack of subjectivity is rooted in the emphasis on object in ancient times, oriented to the natural aesthetic fields. Thus, the subject is passive, lacking in perceptual development and constrained on potential creativity during the process of creation. In the recent society, however, the two extreme developments of technology and individuality resulted in the appearance of representation short of artistry, delegated by naturalism. The lack of artistry mainly lies in the advocating of reordering the real life, the shortage of arty processing of life, taking art as science, abandoning fancy and losing the expression of emotion. Modern art school in west pays much attention on expression, using purely formal and abstract language. Not satisfied with it, super realism and the school of neo-novel in France try to use accurate representation to push art back to life on the ground of naturalism. Naturalism consciously or not expresses the writer's emotion, if there is any, however in the work of Super realism and the school of neo-novel, more mechanical and less emotional things are expressionlessly displayed. Thus, the expression-lack representation is formed. Based on this historical and logical combing above, further ideal is concluded in Part Two: as people's recognition to representation improves and modern aesthetics provides real foundation for the development of representation, the trend of harmonious combination of high realistically describing and full emotionally expressing is historically and logically emerging.After the analysis of Part Two, this paper then transits to inquire the aesthetic nature of representation. Mainly contents in Part Three are concluded as follows: (a) Representation is of high realistic-describing. Its art figure is more concentrative and realistic than real life because of arty processing. (b) Representation is the unity of internal reality and external reality. This feature mainly includes: the unity of emotion and objectivity, the unity of personal style and objectivity. (c) Representation owns the quality of creativity. Because of arty processing, immersing of subject's emotion and melting with the personal style of artist, representation is of creativity, breaking through the form of superficial describing and the restriction of the old models. What is the meaning of representation? Why people always try to represent this world? To answer these questions becomes the key task of Part Four. In this part its meanings are concluded as follows: (a) the art of representation brings us plentiful unforgettable knowledge of social life because of its faithful depicts and touching art imagine. Thus, we can surpass the limitation of living span and get satisfied with our thirst for knowledge. (b) Representation is the necessary way to maintain the interior balance of human art. There is possible danger that the function of representation may be supplanted because of many reasons.