Some Notes on Plato and Aristotle and Mimetic Theory of Art

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Some Notes on Plato and Aristotle and Mimetic
Theory of Art
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Some Notes on Plato and Aristotle and Mimetic
Theory of Art

• And a lot of other stuff.

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The Mimetic Theory of Art

• Art is essentially an imitation of Nature.

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The Mimetic Theory of Art

• Think of the first four letters M I M E
• Art is essentially an mimicry of nature
• Paintings are supposed to look just like the
  real thing etc.
• Arguably the oldest and most widely held view on
  the nature of art. (View held by Plato, et alia.)
• Seems to capture a lot of art (certainly within
  Platos time).

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The Mimetic Theory of Art

• Problems
• How does this handle music?, abstract art?
• What is mimesis exactly? (Imitation,
  mirroring, perceptual equivalence,
  counterfeiting, idealization, representation?)
• If I say that the point of a picture is to
  capture the world exactly as it really is, what
  am I assuming?
• (Star Trek story here- or, to save time, picture
  of Grand Canyon)

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The Mimetic Theory of Art

• But lets look as Platos View anyway
• Believed that art is essentially an imitation of
  nature. (Mimetic Theory of Art)
• Therefore, (according to Plato) art is at best
• (1) useless and
• (2) potentially dangerous.

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• Plato is convinced that the arts form a natural
  grouping and that they all share a common Form
• I.E. That which all and only Arts have in
  common by virtue of which we recognize each to be
  an art and by virtue of which each is an art.
• Not so much an assumption, as the consequence of
  his Metaphysical Theory of Forms.
• We rightly gather them together linguistically
  because of a metaphysical reality.

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• As 20th Century Formalist Clive Bell put is
• "either all works of visual art have some common
  quality, or when we speak of 'works of art' we
  gibber."

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• 1. Art was useless
• It serves no useful purpose in society.
• As a "Imitation of Nature" it added no knowledge.
  No intellectual value-
• (The same value could be added by simply by
  holding up a mirror to the world which would be
  far less costly.)
• According his metaphysics, art is an imitation of
  an imitation, thus barely real at all.

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• Art was potentially dangerous for several
  reasons
• A.) Art was essentially deceptive.
• The whole aim of art was to deceive. Success was
  achieved when the spectator mistook an imitation
  for reality.
• Furthermore, artists were unconcerned with
  facts/truth. It made no difference to artists
  nor to the success of their works whether the
  images or stories they depict were real or their
  messages true or good.

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• B.) Art was mainly concerned with sensual
  pleasure.
• Art seems directed entirely towards pleasing the
  senses and ignoring the mind, intellect, or
  concepts.

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• Remember that, according to Platonic Mind/Body
  Dualism, our bodies are the least valuable, least
  permanent, least "real" aspects of our
  personalities.
• Further, according to Platos Rationalism, our
  senses are incapable of providing us with genuine
  knowledge since they only gather impressions from
  an ever-changing physical world but not
  immaterial/invisible forces which guide, direct
  and sustain the physical world.
• Thus our senses and, consequently, art are
  "metaphysically" misguided since it is directed
  towards illusion and not "reality."
• Further, Art serves to perpetuate and sustain
  this misdirection, keeping us ignorant of truth,
  justice, goodness and "real" beauty.

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• B.) Art was mainly concerned with sensual
  pleasure.
• NB Note this has not only a Metaphysical and
  Epistemological Dimension this has an Ethical
  Dimension as well.
• This has Ethical overtones, not so much in the
  Later Christian Condemnation of Sensualism, but
  rather the more Greek notion, that this was a
  pathetic way to waste a human life. (Too much
  T.V.- Cartoons)
• Ethical in the sense that this is simply not
  what one (human) ought to do.
• Think of the uncanny similarity between the
  imprisoned slaves in Platos Allegory of the
  Cave who mistakenly take the shadows to be all
  there is to reality, an those who in a darkened
  cinema sob uncontrollably when Leonardo DiCaprio
  goes down for the last time.

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• B.) Art was mainly concerned with sensual
  pleasure.
• Humankind lingers unregenerately in Platos cave,
  still reveling, its age old habit, in mere images
  of truth. (Susan Sontag)
• It must be admitted that if imitation is the sole
  purpose of the graphic arts, it is surprising
  that the works of such arts are ever looked upon
  as more than curiosities, or ingenious toys, are
  ever taken seriously by grown-up people. (Roger
  Fry)

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• c.) Art is psychologically de-stabilizing.
• Human existence is, in great part, a struggle to
  master the emotions and sensual urges by using
  reason and intellect according to Plato. (His
  tri-partite theory of the Psyche)
• Therefore art was dangerous and counterproductive
  to this end (i.e. rational self-mastery) since it
  appeals not to reason and intellect, but to the
  psychological forces which constantly try to
  over-through reason, namely passion and emotion.
• "Poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of
  drying them up she lets them rule, although they
  ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to
  increase in happiness and virtue"

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• D.) Art leads to immorality.
• Art was unconcerned with morality, sometimes even
  teaching immoral lessons. (The Iliad) Morality,
  it would seem, has nothing to do with a works
  success as art.
• Plato worries that such art would encourage
  immorality in the citizens of this state. People
  might uncritically accept and admire immoral,
  vicious traits when they are attractively
  packaged by skilled artists (distinction between
  truth and illusion/ physicians and cooks/ heath
  and cosmetics/ beauty and glamour.)
• Like a skilled chef, artists are only interested
  in pleasing the palate, even if it poisons the
  diner. Since (mimetic) art is institutionally
  divorced from truth, goodness or any concern with
  'real' beauty, it creates an environment of
  superficial "flavors" where all sorts of
  atrocities can be made to seem a tempting
  confection.

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• E.) Art was politically dangerous, a threat to
  the common good.
• Similar to the point made earlier (c), Plato
  worried that strong art which appeals to emotions
  stirs up negative emotions which we are trying to
  control.
• But this is more than just a problem for the
  individual. For a people with a history of
  "mania," strong, emotion-stirring art is rightly
  seen as a threat to the good of state/community.
• It was, therefore correctly the concern of
  government.
• NB This is similar to the criticism leveled by
  some today against violence and sex in the media.
  Like Plato, they argue that violence and sex in
  the media cause us to be a more violent, sexually
  obsessed culture. This affects not just the
  people who consume the violent images, but the
  entire community of which they are a part.

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Platos ViewArt is Essentially Mimesis

• Art was potentially dangerous for several
  reasons
• A.) Art was essentially deceptive. (Ep.)
• B.) Art was mainly concerned with sensual
  pleasure. (M, Ep., Eth.)
• C.) Further, Art was psychologically
  de-stabilizing. (for the individual) (Eth., Ps.)
• D.) Art leads to immorality. (Eth.)
• E.) Art was politically dangerous. (threat to the
  common good) (Po. Ps.)

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Platos View

• there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy
  and poetry of which there are many proofs, such
  as the saying of 'the yelping hound howling at
  her lord,' or of one 'mighty in the vain talk of
  fools,' and 'the mob of sages circumventing
  Zeus,' and the 'subtle thinkers who are beggars
  after all' and there are innumerable other signs
  of ancient enmity between them. Notwithstanding
  this, let us assure our sweet friend and the
  sister arts of imitation that if she will only
  prove her title to exist in a well-ordered State
  we shall be delighted to receive her --we are
  very conscious of her charms but we may not on
  that account betray the truth.

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Platos View

• If her defense fails, then, my dear friend, like
  other persons who are enamoured of something, but
  put a restraint upon themselves when they think
  their desires are opposed to their interests, so
  too must we after the manner of lovers give her
  up, though not without a struggle. We too are
  inspired by that love of poetry which the
  education of noble States has implanted in us,
  and therefore we would have her appear at her
  best and truest but so long as she is unable to
  make good her defense, this argument of ours
  shall be a charm to us, which we will repeat to
  ourselves while we listen to her strains that we
  may not fall away into the childish love of her
  which captivates the many. At all events we are
  well aware that poetry being such as we have
  described is not to be regarded seriously as
  attaining to the truth and he who listens to
  her, fearing for the safety of the city which is
  within him, should be on his guard against her
  seductions and make our words his law.

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Platos View

• At all events we are well aware that poetry being
  such as we have described is not to be regarded
  seriously as attaining to the truth and he who
  listens to her, fearing for the safety of the
  city which is within him, should be on his guard
  against her seductions and make our words his law.

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Platos View

• Entire Republic can be seen as an argument for
  allowing Philosophy to do the work accorded to
  Poetry
• In Platos defense, today it is widely agreed
  that the arts do not produce the kind of reliable
  knowledge or moral wisdom that the sciences and
  philosophical argument produce. (And Artist still
  bay at Science and Philosophy)
• But do we beg the question against the arts by
  looking exclusively for propositional knowledge
  (see renderings of molecules).
• Arthur Danto reminds us, "Plato did not precisely
  propose that art was mimesis, but that mimetic
  art was pernicious."

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Aristotles Critical Responses

• Aristotle was Plato's most famous student and
  greatest critic.
• Disagreeing with much else that Plato said,
  Aristotle agreed that art was essentially an
  Mimesis.
• But, he maintained, (good) art was neither
  useless nor dangerous, but rather natural and
  beneficial.

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Aristotles Critical Responses

• Crucial to Aristotle's defense of art is his
• Rejection of Plato's Dualism.
• Man is not an "embodied" intellect, longing for
  the spiritual release of death, but rather and
  animal with, among all the other faculties, the
  ability to use reason and to create.
• Rejection of Platos Rationalism (w.r.t. Human
  Nature)
• We must study humans as we would study other
  animals to discover what is their "nature." Look
  among the species see who are the thriving and
  successful and in what activities do they engage?
  For Aristotle, this is how to determine what is
  and is not appropriate for a human and human
  societies.
• Rejections that Mimesis Mirroring Nature

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Aristotles Critical Responses Art is Not
Useless

• It is Natural
• It is natural for human beings to imitate.
• Any human society which is healthy will be a
  society where there is imitative art.
• Nothing is more natural than for children to
  pretend.
• Art production and training is a necessary part
  of any education since it uses and encourages the
  imaginative manipulation of ideas.
• Nothing is more natural than for human beings to
  create using their imagination.
• Since art is imitation, it is an imaginative use
  of concepts at its heart art is "conceptual,"
  "intellectual."

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Aristotles Critical Responses Good Art is Not
Dangerous

• A. Art is not deceptive
• Artists must accurately portray reality to be
  successful.
• (Drama must accurately portray psychological
  reality in order for characters to be believable
  and their actions understandable.)
• It teaches effectively and it teaches the truth.
• (Convincing and powerful drama is convincing and
  powerful because it reveals some truth of human
  nature.)
• Introduces the concept of "Organic Unity" the
  idea that in any good work of art each of the
  parts must contribute to the overall success of
  the whole.
• (Just as in biological organisms each part
  contributes to the overall health and well-being
  of the creature, so too in good- works of art,
  each element must contribute to the thematic
  development. This is another way in which works
  of art reflects or imitates reality.)
• Unified action, "with its several incidents so
  closely connected that the transposal or
  withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and
  dislocate the whole,"

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Aristotles Critical Responses Good Art is Not
Dangerous

• B.) Sensuous art is not a bad thing
• Aristotle did not believe that the mind was one
  thing and the body was something else and
  therefore Aristotle did not have the bias against
  physical pleasures that Plato did.
• The only way of acquiring knowledge at all,
  according to Aristotle, was through the senses
  and so developing, exercising and sharpening
  those senses through art was a healthy thing to
  do.
• Art was not solely concerned with the sensual
  pleasures, but rather was/should be an
  intellectual, conceptual affair.

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Aristotles Critical Responses Good Art is Not
Dangerous

• D. (Good) Art is institutionally tied to Morality
  and Truth
• (Successful Tragic) Drama always teaches
  morality. When trying to understand how
  tragedies achieve their peculiar effect (Pathos),
  he notes the psychology and morality on which
  they must be based.
• NB Aristotle believed that drama imitated not
  only "events" but actions. As such they imitated
  intended behaviors, psychological forces and the
  unseen "inner life" of persons.
• Note too that he unwittingly set up two functions
  for a work of art to fulfill to imitate nature
  perceptual detail and to imitate natures
  "organic unity" (music, architecture).

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Aristotles Critical Responses Good Art is Not
Dangerous

• CE.
• Aristotle agreed that art did stir up negative
  emotions but, he claims it then purged these in
  an harmless, healthy way.
• Doctrine of Catharsis"
• Art was neither psychologically de-stabilizing
  nor politically destructive.
• Art is a therapeutic part of the healthy life of
  not only the individually, but of the nation.
• NB Similar to arguments made today in defense
  of graphically sexual or violent art or even of
  pornography or of violence on television.

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Aristotles Critical Responses Mimesis ?
Imitation

• Mimesis ? Imitation (Mirroring)
• More like
• Rendering
• Depicting
• Construing
• Idealizing
• Representing
• NB Unlike mirroring, these are acts of intellect.

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Aristotles Critical Responses

• Poetry is more Philosophical than History
• "poetry is something more philosophic and of
  graver import than history (He means a mere
  chronicle of events here.), since its statements
  are of the nature rather of universals, whereas
  those of history are singulars."
• Poetry describes "not the thing that has
  happened" as Aristotle imagines history does "but
  a kind of thing that might happen, (i.e. what is
  possible) as being probable or necessary"
• Thus a mere mirror of history NOT art. Art is
  necessarily conceptual/cognitive.

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Aristotles Critical Responses

• A further point here
• Art displays and transmits this knowledge in an
  unique way. The audience must understand the
  universals at work in the drama to be carried
  away by the drama, and in that sense they must
  internalize, adopt it as his or her own, the
  knowledge of human nature and morality utilized
  by the playwright.

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Platos and Aristotles ViewArt is Essentially
Mimesis

• Art was potentially dangerous for several
  reasons
• A.) Art was essentially deceptive. (Ep.)
• B.) Art was mainly concerned with sensual
  pleasure. (M, Ep., Eth.)
• C.) Further, Art was psychologically
  de-stabilizing. (for the individual) (Eth., Ps.)
• D.) Art leads to immorality. (Eth.)
• E.) Art was politically dangerous. (threat to the
  common good) (Po. Ps.)

• Art was not potentially dangerous for several
  reasons
• A.) (Good) Art was essentially truthful. (Ep.)
• B.) Art was mainly concerned with sensual
  pleasure, and thats a Good thing. (M, Ep., Eth.)
• C.) Art was psychologically healthy (for the
  individual) (Eth., Ps.)
• D.) Art leads to moral knowledge. (Eth.)
• E.) Art was politically necessary and healthy.
  (Po. Ps.)

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Nelson GoodmanArt as Representation

• Can be seen as a continuation of the idea that
  Art is (and is essentially) about something.
• He rejects the idea that Art is an Imitation of
  nature if imitation is understood as mirroring or
  copying.
• He accepts the idea that art-making is a
  cognitive act of representing reality.

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Goodmans Analysis of Representation in Visual
Art

• Two Questions Arise
• What is the mechanism of representation?
• If representational doesnt depend of Copying or
  Mirroring, why is it that so much
  Representational Art DOES seem to resemble the
  objects, etc. they represent?

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Goodmans Analysis of Representation in Visual
Art

• What is the Mechanism of representation?
• Illusion theory?
• But this overlooks how people should and do
  respond to (even very realistic) art.
• Resemblance theory?
• But resemblance to what and in what way?
• (Anything might be said to resemble anything
  else. No simile is, technically, false.)
• Well

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Goodmans Criticisms of Resemblance Theory

• A Resemblance to the way the world really is.
• But according to Goodman, the world really is
  as many ways at is can be truly described. And
  no picture can capture that.

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Goodmans Criticisms of Resemblance Theory

• A The way the world really is for perception.
  (whos)
• A The way the world really is for human
  perception. (which ones?)
• A The way the world really is for ordinary,
  normal human perception. (more spcs)
• (from a particular angle, at a certain distance,
  with one eye closed, through a peep-hole, the see
  eye unmoving)

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• Yikes!

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Goodmans Criticisms of Resemblance Theory

• As the object looks to the normal eye, at
  proper range, from a favorable angle, in good
  light, without instrumentation, unprejudiced by
  affections or animosities or interests, and
  unembellished by thought or interpretation.
• In short, the object is to be copied as seen
  under septic conditions by the free and innocent
  eye.
• But this requires that there BE such a thing as
  an innocent eye.
• Ernst Gombrich claims that there is no innocent
  eye
• The eye comes always ancient to its work,
  obsessed by its own past and by old and new
  insinuations of the ear, nose, tongue, fingers,
  heart, and brain.
• It does not much mirror as take and make.

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• Maybe were on the wrong track.
• Notice resemblance is neither necessary nor
  sufficient for representation.
• Further, resemblance is a symmetric relation and
  representation is not.
• What is it for X to represent Y?

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• What is it for X to represent Y?
• According to Goodman, there is no Natural
  representation.
• All representation depends on a pre-existing
  symbol system.
• If pictures represent, they must be understood as
  symbols within a symbol system.

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• But this implies that we must learn to read
  even realistic pictures. (And photos.)
• This process may be automatic and unconscious,
  but it is no less cognitive than hearing and
  understanding a sentence in ones native
  language.
• We learn to see x as standing for, or even
  resembling, y.

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• A representation or description, by virtue of how
  it classifies and is classified, may make or mark
  connections, analyze objects, and organize the
  world (as we experience it).
• Grasps fresh and significant relationships.
• Standard sorting is often serviceable, even if
  humdrum.
• Novel uses of old categories bring out neglected
  likenesses and differences, force unaccustomed
  associations, and in some measure remake our
  world.

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• EX His graduate assistant is panting puppy.
• This requires you to see both as members of
  the same set and thus clarifies a heretofore
  overlooked property.
• (Perhaps both belong to the class of things
  which seek approval give enthusiastic, uncritical
  support.)
• NOTE If representing is a matter of classifying
  objects rather than of imitating them, of
  characterizing rather than of copying, it is not
  a matter of passive recording.

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• And if this aim of the picture is achieved, it
  effects a realignment in our thinking.
• (So long as theres poetry art- 1984 cant
  happen.)
• When such a realignment is interesting and
  useful, the picture, like a crucial experiment,
  can be said to make a genuine contribution to
  knowledge. (We can think new thoughts.)

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• Consider this
• To the complaint that his portrait of Gertrude
  Stein did not look like her, Picasso is said to
  have answered
• "No matter it will.
• On Goodmans view, this is because we will come
  to see Gertrude Stein in terms of her portrait.
• Nature is a product of art and discourse

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• But what about Realism in Representation?
• Even if not necessary, dont (some) Realistic
  Representations achieve representation via
  non-cognitive means (i.e. visual resemblance)?

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• What constitutes realism of representation?
• Possible Answer 1
• A picture is realistic just to the extent that it
  is a successful illusion, leading the viewer to
  suppose that it is, or that it has the
  characteristics of, what it represents.
• Advantages over the resemblance theory because
• it emphasizes the responses and expectations of
  the viewer (rather than content to be copied).
• It can account for fictive representations (no
  question of resemblance to what?)

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• Problems
• What deceives depends upon what is
  observed/expected, and what is observed/expected
  varies with interests and habits.
• What will deceive me into supposing that an
  object of a given kind is before me depends upon
  what I have noticed about such objects, and this
  in turn is affected by the way I am used to
  seeing them depicted.
• Consider the various attempts to mask the signs
  of aging. What would have worked in the 1700s
  no longer does because we have come to notice
  other signs.
• 2. If the probability of actual confusion is 1,
  we no longer have representation we have
  identity.
• 3. Probability of real confusion seldom rises
  above zero. Seeing a picture as a picture
  precludes mistaking it for anything else.
• 4. Appropriate conditions of observation defeat
  deception.
• According to Goodman, When viewing a
  representational painting I recognize the images
  as signs for the objects and characteristics
  represented, signs that work instantly and
  unequivocally without being confused with what
  they denote.

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Goodman Looks at Representation

• Possible Answer 2
• For realistic representation, the most realistic
  picture is the one that provides the greatest
  amount of pertinent information.
• Problem
• Reversed perspective and colors, appropriately
  interpreted, yields exactly the same information.
  Realistic and unrealistic pictures may be
  equally informative. Since it provides the same
  true information it is faithful though not
  realistic. Thus correctness or truth is not a
  sufficient condition for realism.

52
Goodman Looks at Representation

• But it might be objected, in really realistic
  pictures, information contained easily issues
  form it. Like second nature
• Well, not if you accept Goodman Big Point
• Even Realistic Pictures must be learned to be
  read.
• Thus
• How easily the information issues from the
  picture depends upon how stereotyped the mode of
  representation is (upon how commonplace the
  labels and their uses have become).
• Realism is relative. (i.e. determined by the
  system of representation standard for a given
  culture or person at a given time).
• No pictures (real or possible) are Absolutely
  realistic.
• Whether a picture is judged to be realistic
  depends at any time entirely upon what frame or
  mode is then standard for the one doing the
  judging.

53
Goodman Looks at Representation

• Realistic representation, in brief, depends not
  upon imitation or illusion or information but
  upon inculcation.
• Our (western) tendency to link representation and
  realism and resemblance stems from the fact that
  our representational customs, which govern
  realism, also tend to generate resemblance.
• Consider the various attempts to mask the signs
  of aging. What would have worked in the 1700s
  no longer does because we have come to notice
  other signs.
• Individual judgements of similarity are more or
  less objective and categorical, but the
  assessment of total resemblance is subject to
  influences galore, and our representational
  customs are not least among these.

54
Goodman Looks at Representation

• Thus there is no the crucial difference between
  pictorial and verbal properties, between
  nonlinguistic and linguistic symbols or systems,
  which makes a difference between representation
  in general and description.
• Goodman subsumes a pictorial representation under
  the category of a description.
• Analogy between pictorial representation and
  verbal description.
• Reference to an object is a necessary condition
  for depiction or description of it, but no degree
  of resemblance is a necessary or sufficient
  condition for either.

55
Goodman Looks at Representation

• Application and classification of a label are the
  products of stipulation and habituation in
  varying proportions.
• The choice among systems is free but given a
  system, the question whether a newly encountered
  object is a desk or a unicorn-picture or is
  represented by a certain painting is a question
  of the propriety, under that system, of
  projecting the predicate "desk" or the predicate
  "unicorn-picture" or the painting over the thing
  in question, and the decision both is guided by
  and guides usage for that system.
• Representation is thus disengaged from perverted
  ideas of it as an idiosyncratic physical process
  like mirroring, and is recognized as a Symbolic
  relationship that is relative and variable.