  The effect of Heidegger’s provocative claim about Van Gogh’s painting of “A Pair of Shoes” is similar. When Heidegger states that “[t]he picture really represents nothing,” he is not advancing the bizarre claim that Van Gogh’s painting of a pair of shoes does not represent shoes. The fact that Van Gogh’s painting represents shoes is the first thing anyone notices about it and it is also (as we have seen) the first thing Heidegger himself mentioned about it: Van Gogh’s picture “represents [darstellt] a pair of farmer’s shoes” (PLT 19/GA5 3). Heidegger is not retracting that claim but, instead, building upon it, suggesting that Van Gogh’s painting does more than just represent a pair of shoes: Van Gogh’s painting “really, properly, or authentically” (eigentlich) represents (the) nothing. Indeed, it represents (the) nothing in a way that ultimately allows us to transcend aesthetic representation from within—by getting us back in touch with a more basic level of human existence which the order of objective representations presupposes but cannot fully  recapture.[74]