Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 1 Closing reflections on mimeticism 4 Representation remains commonplace –Dorm & apartment rooms, desks (of course, much of this is not art) 4 Why are representative images so powerful?

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 2 Closing reflections on mimeticism 4 1. Problem of specifying the notion of imitation in art –Is strict mimeticism ever possible? Is it desirable? What is the point of representational works of art? E.g., of trompe l’oeil (deceit of the eye)

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 3 Closing reflections on mimeticism Ernst Gombrich -- all artistic representation occurs through schema Nelson Goodman -- we make the world (in art, in science, in all knowing?)

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 4 Closing reflections on mimeticism Gombrich & Nelson’s main point -- creation of works of art is always as much making as it is re-presenting

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 5 Closing reflections on mimeticism 4 2. Can the mimetic theory fit all art? –Abstract art, much of music & dance? Wassily Kandinsky’s –One possible response: But even non- representational art has some representational elements. What could they be?

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 6 Closing reflections on mimeticism –And what about photography? Roger Scruton’s suggestion –What about fiction? Colin Lyas’s “as if” suggestion (Aesthetics (Toronto: McGill UP, 1997) 49).

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 7 Closing reflections on mimeticism 4 3. Other criticisms of representational art –Clive Bell’s critique of representational art In works of art, representation is always irrelevant; form is all that counts –Response to Bell We often see form through representation

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 8 Closing reflections on mimeticism Form & representation are intertwined. –But Bell’s critique of representational has some value It proposes that we should not look at works of art as surrogates for the real thing; when art is representational, it must have some other function.

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 9 Closing reflections on mimeticism 4 4. What might be these other functions? –Some suggestions (add your own) –(1) Delight in the act of imitating itself Our attention in a representational work of art is [should be] on the act of imitating itself--the skill & the imagination which it requires. We take delight in this skill. (See Lyas 53).

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 10 Closing reflections on mimeticism Delight in the wit & cleverness of imitation åtrompe l’oeil

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 11 Rene Magritte’s Cette n’est pas une pipe

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 12 –Kenneth Davies –U.S., b.1925

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 13 Closing reflections on mimeticism 4 Unswept Floor Mosaic. 4 Vatican Museum s, Rome

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 14 Mark Tansey. The Innocent Eye Test Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 15 Closing reflections on mimeticism –(2) An effective way of expressing emotions –(3) The transformation of perception

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 16 4 Edouard Manet (French, ) A Bar at the Folies-Bergeres Courtauld Institute, London

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 17 4 Edouard Manet (French, ) A Bar at the Folies- Bergeres detail of reflections 4 Courtauld Institute, London

Closing reflections on mimeticism - slide 18 Closing reflections on mimeticism –Others?