The history of Western painting represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from antiquity until the present time. Until the mid-19th century it was primarily concerned with representational and traditional modes of production, after which time more modern, abstract and conceptual forms gained favor.
Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665–1667)
Édouard Manet's The Balcony (1868)
Aurochs Cave painting, Lascaux, France
Lascaux, horse
Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements. Signs are arranged in order to form semantic constructions and express relations.
Bust of Aristotle, Greek philosopher
Reproduction of the Mona Lisa
Greek theatrical masks depicted in Hadrians Villa mosaic
Charles Sanders Peirce