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Representation

Art
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The depiction or presentation of people, objects, places, or ideas in art.

Detailed Definition
Representation concerns how art makes something present through image, symbol, likeness, or convention. It raises questions about accuracy, power, visibility, stereotype, and who has the authority to depict whom. In poetry, representation matters whenever a poem describes a person, culture, event, or landscape. A poet may examine whether language honors complexity or reduces a subject to an emblem, and may use self-conscious description to challenge inherited ways of seeing.
Example
Example in poetry:
In William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow,” the wheelbarrow and chickens represent an ordinary rural scene through precise visual details; A poem about a cracked statue can represent a fallen political ideal by describing its broken face and pedestal; Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” represents the fish so vividly that its scars and “five old pieces of fish-line” suggest endurance; A poet may represent grief through concrete images such as an empty chair, unopened mail, and a silent telephone
Additional Notes
Representation concerns how art selects, shapes, or interprets reality; it may be realistic, symbolic, or abstract. Compare depiction and abstraction.
Other Meanings of “Representation”
Also Known As
Depiction Representational Art
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