ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to critically analyze and understand the nuances of representativeness in a work of art. The author’s concern here is to why art as exemplification has so often been considered a means of instruction or vehicle of idealization. This chapter, through the visual example of Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: Red Square and Black Square, gives a theoretical argument for treating the painting schematically without distorting Malevich’s intentions of trying to produce through painting a condition of non-objectivity where art captures a permanent condition of “spiritual” force. The chapter discusses the theory of representation, which uses the display function as a way of preserving the realm of meaning in the text. The author insists that it is necessary to resist the temptation to treat art pictures as a description, and the representation structure need not refer to the existing state of affairs. The display is thus free to apply to possible situations: The work becomes an element of our grammar, not of our stock of truths.
