Representation

Bell’s discussion of representation seems to be hinting at, in a somewhat obtuse manner, a very true thing. Art should at all costs avoid representation. Representation is meaningless. It is embodiment that truly counts. For example, a man spends two years painting a picture or a chair, pure and simple. Upon the completion of the painting, he shows it to his friends who immediately laugh at him for his foolishness. “What good is this?” say his friends. You can’t sit in it, you can even put things on it. The representation of a chair gains nothing. However, if that same man embodies the meaning of that chair through his painting and imbues each brush stroke with the importance of that chair to him, than his friends would never be able to mock him. “I know that chair.” They would say. Or perhaps “I once owned a chair quite similar and it meant the world to me”, or even “That chair looks like what rest would be if rest had physical form.”
Representation is hollow and useless and should be met with ridicule. Art has a power that can reach beyond representation towards true incarnation, and therefore anything less is a failure.