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The earliest experience of art must have been
that it was incantatory, magical; art was an
instrument of ritual. The earliest theory of art,
that of the Greek philosophers, proposed that
[05] art was mimesis, imitation of reality. It is at this
point that the peculiar question of the value of
art arose. ........ the mimetic theory, by its very
terms, challenges art to justify itself.
Plato, who proposed the theory, seems to have
[10] done so in order to rule that the value of art is
dubious. ........ he considered ordinary material
things as themselves mimetic objects,
imitations of transcendent forms or structures,
even the best painting of a bed would be only
[15] an “imitation of an imitation.” For Plato, art was
not particularly useful (the painting of a bed is
no good to sleep on), nor, in the strict sense,
true. And Aristotle’s arguments in defense of
art do not really challenge Plato’s view that all
[20] art is ........ a lie. But he does dispute Plato’s
idea that art is useless. Lie or not, art has a
certain value according to Aristotle because it
is a form of therapy. Art is useful, after all,
Aristotle counters, medicinally useful ........ it
[25] arouses and purges dangerous emotions.
In Plato and Aristotle, the mimetic theory of art
goes hand in hand with the assumption that art
is always figurative. But advocates of the
mimetic theory need not close their eyes to
[30] decorative and abstract art. The fallacy that art
is necessarily a “realism” can be modified or
scrapped without ever moving outside the
problems delimited by the mimetic theory.
The fact is, all Western consciousness of and
[35] reflection upon art have remained within the
confines staked out by the Greek theory of art
as mimesis or representation. It is through this
theory that art as such becomes problematic,
in need of defense. And it is the defense of art
[40] which gives birth to the odd vision by which
something we have learned to call “form” is
separated off from something we have learned
to call “content,” and to the well-intentioned
move which makes content essential and form
[45] accessory.
Even in modern times, when most artists and
critics have discarded the theory of art as
representation of an outer reality in favor of the
theory of art as subjective expression, the main
[50] feature of the mimetic theory persists. Whether
we conceive of the work of art on the model of
a picture or on the model of a statement,
content still comes first. The content may have
changed. It may now be less figurative, less
[55] lucidly realistic. But it is still assumed that a
work of art is its content. Or, as it’s usually put
today, that a work of art by definition says
something.
Adapted from: SONTAG, Susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. Penguin Modern Classics, Straus and Giroux, 2009. p. 3-4.
The words advocates (l. 28), scrapped (l. 32) and accessory (l. 45) can be replaced, without change in meaning, by
