Representation

Abstract

Mimesis has played a key role in aesthetics since Plato and Aristotle. Earlier philosophers tended to defend the view that art is mimetic, while thinkers in the modern and postmodern periods have largely rejected it. Much depends, of course, on how mimesis is understood. Those who have rejected mimetic theories have often taken mimesis to mean a literal imitating or copying, resulting in a work of art capable of fooling the eye and tempting the spectator to mistake the work for what it depicts. A more sophisticated version of the mimetic theory held that the work copied the essence or idea of an object rather than its sensuous appearance. If the term is taken in a broader and more flexible sense, however, then mimetic theories—or to use a term more palatable to their defenders, “representation” theories—have by no means vanished from the aesthetic.