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Over thousands of years and many cultural movements, the debate over whether art truly imitates life (or vice versa) has become virtually exhausted. From classical philosophy to contemporary studies, what exactly happens in the space between artist and viewer has remained ambiguous. This is often summarised as the concept of mimesis.
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In 1889, Oscar Wilde asserted boldly that “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life”. He argued that rather than merely copy, life imitates art because life craves a kind of expression found in great art. This life-affirming quality is at the heart of art’s value. Beyond economics and social status, the personal value of art is ...
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Does art imitate life?
What happens in the space between artist and viewer?
How does Jack's life become a work of Art?
Why do artists create things that are already an imitation?
Apr 11, 2011 · Life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art in comparison is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing, and emasculate. Life imposes by brute energy, like ...
- Plato
- Aristotle
- Conclusion
Back to Plato, according to whom only ideas are real. Art is imitation, he said; it imitates the things we see around us. In their turn, these things are imitations of ideas, which, on the other hand, as well as real, are perfect and unchanging; they are the only reality and, if we wanted to know that reality, we would be able to do so only through...
Like Plato, Aristotle affirms that art is imitation. However, he has no moral condemnation of it. He argues that imitation underpins the way we learn. An essential part of our becoming morally virtuous, that is, of developing high moral standards, is the imitation of good deeds until we form a habit of it. As children, we imitate our parents and gu...
As we can see from what we’ve briefly gleamed in the above, the question of whether art as imitation is a good or bad thing is complex and multifaceted. While some argue that art simply reflects reality, others contend that it can distort our perception of the world. Regardless of where you stand on this debate, there are several books that can pro...
Thus, Jack’s life imitates and even becomes a work of art. Jack goes beyond creating one fictional identity for himself, how-ever, and creates a fictional brother, Ernest, who further demonstrates Jack’s adherence to Wilde’s aesthetic understanding of life and literature. Jack pretends to be Ernest when he arrives in town, providing him ...
- Drake DeOrnellis
- 2019
The poet is like a painter who, as we have already observed, will make a likeness of a cobbler though he understands nothing of cobbling; and his picture is good enough for those who know no more than he does, and judge only by colours and figures. Quite so. In like manner the poet with his words and phrases may be said to lay on the colours of ...
Life imitating art. Anti-mimesis is a philosophical position that holds the direct opposite of Aristotelian mimesis. Its most notable proponent is Oscar Wilde, who opined in his 1889 essay that, "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life". In the essay, written as a Platonic dialogue, Wilde holds that anti- mimesis "results not merely ...
