Ashbery’s “The Painter” is about representational painting as well as representationalism strategies in art in general, particularly (and expectedly) poetry. At the heart of the poem’s narrative is a conflict of two differing views of art that hinges on how representation is treated. The building dwellers believe in art “[a]s a means to an end” (Line 10), of “putting [themselves],” or anything else, “on canvas” (Line 29). The building dwellers believe that art should capture and recognizably represent something in the world. However, the painter hopes that “nature, not art, might usurp the canvas” (Line 14), seeking art that avoids the controlling and limiting practices of traditional representation.

The tradition of Western art is largely based on representation, where paintings (and poems) recognizably depict some scene or object or figure in the world or in nature. In this kind of representational art, the accuracy and skillfulness of a representation is largely what determines the value of a work of art. Paintings and poems that vividly or subtlety recreate lived experience are deemed effective insofar as they reproduce the world and its contents in careful detail. However, there are traditions of art that push against both these practices and these ways of evaluating art, producing paintings or literature that might not recognizably reproduce some concrete object in the world.