Art as Imitation

Clinton Bronder

Subject: Art as Imitation

Class reading: The Nature of Art: Chapter 1

January 13^th, 2011

In Tomas E. Wartenbergs book, The Nature of Art, he tells us Plato said “Art is dangerous, for it’s appeal to the irrational distracts us from the legitimate claims of reason” (Wartenburge, 14). He defines art as irrational as he says it is removed too much from the real. The real he refers to is the form, the perfect instance of a being, timeless and unchanged. The natural things we see in every day life are only once removed from the form as they copy the form. He says art is even further removed from the ultimate form as it imitates the every day things, essentially copying the copy. Even though art is far removed from the ultimate form of things it is still a wonderful representation of the form and provides understanding of that form. In Art and Religion, Richard Shusterman agrees by saying “Though contrasted to ordinary real things, their vivid experiential power provides a heightened sense of the real and suggests deeper realities than those conveyed by common sense and science.” (Richard, 4). Schusterman explains that even though a painting doesn’t contain the same shape or substance of the ultimate form, it provides a viewer with an opportunity to utilize the most informative of all sense, vision. Also, in the case of divine figures, there are no natural forms that we can see to represent them. So what should we do to see the form in this instance? Without a visual representation of the divine we would not have the means to thoroughly understand it. Because there is no natural representation of deities on earth, art provides us the imagery needed to involve our sight in our understanding of the divine.