Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Art as Imitation
- We learn from art because the
imitations it provides teach us
something about the world
- Degas' Little Dancer Aged Fourteen
- represents the fluidity and
grace of movement of ballet
dancers
- the more successful the imitation, the better the art
- valued for a true to life
depiction of a scene
- Constable's The Hay Wain
- Heda's Still Life with a Lobster
- valued for accuracy and level of detail in
creating a still life that is authentic,
realistic and life like
- Plato
- art is only a copy of reality therefore it is essentially
deceptive
- it is an imitation of an imitation of the original
concept
- extremely imperfect
- art is not a good path to knowledge
- art has no real practical purpose
- Criticisms of Plato
- presupposes the existence of a world of forms to begin with
- assumes the key to successful art is accuracy
- abstract art
- Malevich's The Black Square
- artist's aim is not to represent
material objects, but rather to
grasp their essence
- possible to see art as imitation but not devalue it as 'mimesis'
- Raphael - 'in order to paint a beautiful woman... I
make use of a certain idea that comes into my head'
- He tries to represent the ideal
woman - not a woman who
actually exists
- purpose of art is not only to imitate
objects but to represent their essence
- Idealism
- Vecchio's A Blonde Woman
- Trompe l'oeil
- most impressive in terms of skill at representing reality as it seems three-dimensional and
deceives the audience
- However can we say that Trompe l'oeil artworks
are better than Picasso's Guernica or Van Gogh's
Chair because they are less realistic
- del Caso's Escaping Criticsm
- we can work out quickly that it is only an
illusion
- If art was only imitation, it would be an illusion whose aim was to deceive
- it would be a failure as soon as we worked out that it is an illusion
- How can art inform us if its purpose is to deceive us?