Mimesis

A question has been posted in the comments box about mimesis. It's great to see the blog being used as a forum, so do remember if you want to get me to think about an issue use the comments boxes.

This is the actual question, "The main problem i'm pondering is..... where does mimesis sit when it comes to finding the balance between realism and abstraction. How much information do I give to the new copy ?"

Mimesis is a very complex subject and in the time I've got I will have to deal with it in a few different posts, some first thoughts:

Mimesis

One of the most important issues that anyone making a drawing that looks like something has to deal with is the concept of mimesis.

Mimesis operates in a variety of ways when making a drawing (or any other artwork) and these can be broken down into different approaches to thinking about how a dialogue is set up between the ‘real world’, the viewer or perceiver and the drawing itself.

Nature creates similarities. One need only think of mimicry. The highest capacity for producing similarities, however, is man’s. His gift of seeing resemblances is nothing other than a rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former times to become and behave like something else. Perhaps there is none of his higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role.
— Walter Benjamin, “On the Mimetic Faculty” 1933

Benjamin is thinking about verbal language here but it applies just as well to visual languages.

Aesthetics, sometimes defined as critical reflections on art, often reflects on perception. Perception is mainly concerned with ‘sensations’ or the sensuous elements, however when perceiving artworks sensation is only part of the picture. Other issues such as the role of memory, emotion or reasoning can play a part, this is why aesthetics has to take into account both psychological and cognitive processes when coming to an understanding of what has been called "sensuous cognition." Baumgarten together with Kant set out the terms by which we now understand aesthetics, one could say the ‘thinking senses’ or as Kant would say, the ‘perceptual embodiment of ideas.’ Kant states that the products of an artist's imagination are essentially mimetic, because they are based on the appearance of nature. He would term nature‘objective reality.’ Kant went further than this and explained that a work of art “does not merely copynature it embodies concepts more fully than any single instance in nature”. (Kamhi, 2004) Donald in his book, A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness goes further, he states “Whereas mimicry attempts to render an exact duplicate of an event or phenomenon, and imitation also seeks to copy an original, mimesis adds a new dimension: it re-enacts and re-presents an event or relationship in a nonliteral yet clearly intelligible way.”(Donald, 2002)

Mimesis is therefore a concept that is not just about copying. It is a concept that suggests that we model our understanding on perceptions or experiences of the real world and when we try and communicate these understandings we reflect back on the way we shape communications using these experiences. In the gap between the experience of reality and reflection upon it we create ‘mimesis’. In making a drawing that ‘looks like something else’ we are operating at a deep level of meaning making.

One of the first dialogues surrounding these issues was set out by Plato. He wasn’t too happy about mimesis, he was worried that it caused confusion between what was real and what wasn’t, he saw it as a type of lie. It could never be as good as the original; it was less than real and therefore removed from the Truth. However Aristotle argued that art adds something, it doesn’t just imitate, it is not like a mirror. He argues that artists select from nature and that this selection has purpose. (By using this argument you could start a debate as to whether or not Duchamp and his selection of the readymade, was simply illustrating the core implication of Aristotle’s concept). An artist, according to Aristotle develops an idea related to reality and this idea is perceived during the perception of the world and afterwards as the perception is thought about and this idea is then shaped into the art object. This definition of mimesis allows for a much wider argument to be developed in relation to the how we might think about art and its relationship with the world. Garry Hagberg opens out these arguments in his article, ‘Aristotle's Mimesis and Abstract Art, in this article he also gives a good account of the basic ideas and issues surrounding the original debate. (This would be a very useful text to read in relation to Stephen’s question)

This is where drawing as a discrete activity can perhaps be used to open this debate out. Because drawing tends towards abstraction, (it reduces the world down to line, tone, mark etc.) you could argue that in comparison to film, video, painting and sculpture it is not very good at imitating reality. Instead of being a tool that facilitates mimicry, it facilitates selection and concept development. For instance if you examine how a contour line works, it creates a concept of the world as much as it actually tells us something about the world. Contours (think of what happens when you draw from the figure using a single continuous line) are invented to help the moment of perception become realised, they don’t create a picture of reality, or mirror it. It has been said many times, but it is always worth repeating, “there is no such thing as a line in nature”.

Because the basic tools of drawing are clearly devices that allow us to abstract information from the world and because mimesis is a key concept in the development of theories about art, (aesthetics) we can start breaking down the various elements that make up a drawing and we can try and unpick how the mimetic facility helps us construct communication with others.

 Compare these two images.

Vija Celmins

Keith Coventry

Both these artists are making a point about art. Celmins work is always 'realistic' and relies on mimesis to give the viewer an entry point into her ideas. The eraser being a key tool of the abstract expressionists that were one of the most powerful art movements around when she started off as an artist. In particular Rauchenberg had made a deeply insightful comment on their work with his 'Erased De Kooning' drawing. Celmins' image is pink and suggests another issue, the lack of women in the Abstract Expressionist ranks. Coventry has copied the plans of an existing housing estate and painted an image that looks like early modernism, (it could almost be a Mondrian), he is using two different types of mimesis, looking like art and looking like life. He points to the fact that Modernism has influenced housing design as much as painting. Both these artists use mimesis to carry ideas, but quite different ones. In the next post I'll try to open out how this works.