Imitative art

“ If I were to say, on the contrary, that the best picture was that which most closely imitated nature, I should assume that art could only please by imitating nature, and I should cast out of the pale of criticism those parts of works of art which are not imitative, that is to say, intrinsic beauties of color and form, and those works of art wholly, which, like the arabesques of Raffaelle in the Loggias, are not imitative at all. ”

“ Now there is a point of view in which we may regard the imitative art of all races, the most civilized as well as the most barbarous—in reference to the power of correctly representing animal and vegetable forms, such as they exist in nature. The perfection of such imitation depends not so much on the manual dexterity of the artist as on his intelligence and comprehension of the type of the essential qualities of the form he desires to represent. ”

“ But now that the imitative art has enclosed him, it is clear that we must begin by dividing the art of creation; for imitation is a kind of creation—of images, however, as we affirm, and not of real things. ”

“ The repetition of existing forms with no modification by the individual workman is not creation, but imitation; and imitation is manufacture, not art. Inasmuch as the two panels could not be distinguished, the presentment signified no more than the reality. Tried as a work of art, the imitative picture, in common with the photograph, lacks the necessary element of interpretation, of revelation. That the representation may become art, there must be added to it some new attribute or quality born of the artist's spirit. The work must take on new meaning. ”

“ His pictures have a practical purpose, and do not spring from what we are apt, perhaps too hastily, to consider the innate love of imitation for its own sake. In modern art, in modern times, no doubt the desire to imitate nature, by painting or sculpture, has become almost an innate impulse, an in-born instinct. But there must be some ‘reason why’ for this; and it does not seem at all unlikely that we inherit the love, the disinterested love, of imitative art from very remote ancestors, whose habits of imitation had a direct, interested, and practical purpose. ”

“ And these several discoveries have placed the results of mere imitative art within reach of the mass; in other words, her prose language, that which mechanical science can utter, is so universal, that her poetry, that which must be conceived and expressed through individual genius, the emanation of the soul, is more distinctly recognized and absolutely demanded from the artist, in order to vindicate his claim to that title, than ever before. ”

“ There exists a wide field of thought which, though open to poetry, is closed to the arts of manual imitation. But from what does poetry derive its special sway over regions of the mind that lie beyond the direct influence of imitative art? ”

“ The following hypothesis may be the mode of accounting for this paradox, and, at the same time, may throw some light upon another, which will be noticed; that although painting is an imitative art, imitation, to the extent of deception, does not constitute its highest excellence. ”

“ If we trace back the varied art-products now existing, we find that at each stage the divergence from previous patterns is but small when compared with the agreement; and in the earliest art the persistency of imitation is yet more conspicuous. The old forms and ornaments and symbols were held sacred, and perpetually copied. Indeed, the strong imitative tendency notoriously displayed by the lowest human races, ensures among them a constant reproducing of likenesses of things, forms, signs, sounds, actions, and whatever else is imitable ”

“ But, hitherto, the energy of growth in any people may be almost directly measured by their passion for imitative art; [Pg 306] namely, for sculpture, or for the drama, which is living and speaking sculpture, or, as in Greece, for both; and in national as in actual childhood, it is not merely the making, but the making-believe; not merely the acting for the sake of the scene, but acting for the sake of acting, that is delightful. ”

“ Thus, in addition to the section on poetry as an imitative art, we have a section on imitation of nature, another on external nature, and another on imitation. Imitation, in the last of these, it is true, means for the most part imitation of the ancients, as in the sentence in which Thomas Rymer urged the seventeenth-century dramatists to imitate Attic tragedy even to the point of introducing the chorus. ”

“ But it is not so with that great imitative art, to the power of which all ages, the rudest and the most enlightened, bear witness. Since its first great masterpieces were produced, everything that is changeable in this world has been changed. ”

“ With this primary principle we may now complete our statical theory of Art, by indicating in it three distinct degrees or phases. The fine arts have been divided into imitative and inventive; but this distinction has no real foundation. Art always imitates, and always idealizes. True, as the real is in every case the source of the ideal, Art begins at first with simple Imitation. In the childhood, whether of men or of the race, as also with the lower animals, servile imitation, and that of the most insignificant actions, is the only symptom of esthetic capacity. ”

“ But in our own more restricted usage, to imitate means to copy, mimic or represent some existing phenomenon, some definite reality of experience; and we can only call those imitative arts which bring before us such things, either directly by showing us their actual likeness, as sculpture does in solid form, and as painting does by means of lines and colours on a plane surface, or else indirectly, by calling up ideas or images of them in the mind, as poetry and literature do by means of words. ”

“ Imitation is a precipice, a swift descent through poverty of thought into the chaos of mannerism, in the place of style.
The imitative tendency, as existing in all human minds, cannot be ignored or despised. In individuals it accompanies enthusiasm for the beautiful, and the graceful charm of sympathy. It maintains continuity between specimen and specimen, between artist and artist, between century and century; and it is this which enables an adept to say with certainty of consecutive styles, “This is Spanish work of the sixteenth century ”

“ It is usual to speak of all the fine arts as imitative arts. The term is not always applicable, and, when most applicable, requires explanation. What does the poetry of sentiment imitate? What does a song imitate? ”

“ Economic Substitution.—But imitation has many phases. Modern photography in copying the great works of old masters has made it possible to study their works with exactitude in the dimensions of black and white, and if the work is an etching or an engraving the reproduction claims a closer relationship with the original. The art of engraving from painters' work is imitative to the extent that it depicts the same subject and takes its initial inspiration from the painted canvas. ”

“ But we must remember that idealized imitation, as such, is not the whole task of these arts nor their only means of appeal. There is another part of their task, logically though not practically independent of the relations borne by their imitations The appeal of the imitative arts depends partly on non-imitative elements. to the original phenomena of nature, and dependent on the appeal made through the eye and ear to our primal organic sensibilities by the properties of rhythm, pattern and regulated design in the arrangement of sounds, lines, masses, colours and light-and-shade. ”

“ But while the great, the practical use of line and color followed parallel lines with sound and got farther and farther away from imitative features, the art of painting, as it is commonly called, developed in just the opposite direction, it became more and more imitative, until of late years it would seem that the last word has been said in the reproduction of natural objects and natural light and color effects. ”

“ If the imitative arts are to touch and elevate the emotions, if they are to afford permanent delight of the due pitch and volume, it is not a more essential law that their imitation, merely as such, should be of the order which we have defined as ideal, than that they should at the same time exhibit these independent effects which they share with the non-imitative group. ”

“ The Web.—Literature, although it stands apart by reason of the great destiny and general use of its medium in the affairs of men, is yet an art like other arts. Of these we may distinguish two great classes: those arts, like sculpture, painting, acting, which are representative, or, as used to be said very clumsily, imitative; and those, like architecture, music, and the dance, which are self-sufficient, and merely presentative. ”

“ This variety of expression is certainly very fine, and is well calculated to teach students of art the value of imitative power, and the importance of being able to express clearly the affections and emo tions of the characters represented. ”

“ Besides this, the imitative arts, especially poetry, owe much of their effect to a similar exhibition of properties quite foreign to the imagination; insomuch that in every line of the most applauded poems, we meet with either ideas drawn from the external senses, or truths discover'd to the understanding, or illustrations of contrivance and final causes, or above all the rest, with circumstances proper to awaken and engage the passions. ”

“ If we keep in mind the source and origin of these arts, we must remember what has already been observed, that they spring by no means from man’s love of imitation alone, but from his desire to record and commemorate experience, using the The imitative arts are arts of record using imitation as their means. ”

“ After all, what the imitative arts really give us are merely the various styles of particular artists, or of certain schools of artists. Surely you don't imagine that the people of the Middle Ages bore any resemblance at all to the figures on mediaeval stained glass, or in mediaeval stone and wood carving, or on mediaeval metal-work, or tapestries, or illuminated MSS. They were probably very ordinary-looking people, with nothing grotesque, or remarkable, or fantastic in their appearance. ”

“ With us, all this has been reversed; and we have discarded nature at first, only to flounder about, and be lost in a Limbo of Vanity. With them invention rose from the ground of imitation: with us, the boldness of the invention was acknowledged in proportion as no traces of imitation were discoverable. Our greatest and most successful candidates in the epic walk of art, have been those who founded their pretensions to be history-painters on their not being portrait-painters. ”

“ The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole. ”

“ An artist whose judgment is matured by long observation, considers rather what the picture once was, than what it is at present. He has acquired a power by habit of seeing the brilliancy of tints through the cloud by which it is obscured. An exact imitation, therefore, of those pictures, is likely to fill the student’s mind with false opinions, and to send him back a colourist of his own formation, with ideas equally remote from nature and from art, from the genuine practice of the masters and the real appearances of things. ”

“ Sometimes the idea of imitation fades away, and they are willing, no more, to suggest lilies by a convention, and to distort even the human figure, while they concern themselves with harmonies in which the shapes of flower or figure sound merely incidental notes. We must not forget that these are extremes in a single scale, and that all painting is to some extent realistic, to some extent decorative. Its extremes are wholly imitative in aim, and dull, and wholly conventional in aim, and empty. ”

“ The very least invention surpasses all the masterpieces of imitation.
In vain is it said that art ought to imitate beautiful Nature. To select is no longer to imitate. Perfection in imitation is exactness; moreover, choice supposes a rule; where find the criterion? What signifies, in fine, imitation in architecture, in music, and even in poetry? At most, one can thus explain descriptive poetry, that is to say, the most prosaic kind. We must conclude, therefore, that if, in its compositions, art employs the forms of Nature, and must study them, its aim is not to copy and to reproduce them. ”

“ It is immaterial whether the sense of hearing, sight, or touch is appealed to; it does not matter whether it is a composition of sound, of color, of line, or of form that is under consideration, the fundamental principles of the art are the same; and one of the fundamental propositions is: imitation is fatal to pure art. ”

“ In order to encourage you to imitation, to the utmost extent, let me add, that very finished artists in the inferior branches of the art will contribute to furnish the mind and give hints of which a skilful painter, who is sensible of what he wants, and is in no danger of being infected by the contact of vicious models, will know how to avail himself. ”

“ It may appear strange perhaps to hear this rule disputed; but it must be considered that, if the excellence of a painter consisted only in this kind of imitation, painting must lose its rank, and be no longer considered as a liberal art, and sister to poetry—this imitation being merely mechanical, in which the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best! for the painter of genius cannot stoop to drudgery, in which the understanding has no part;—and what pretence has the art to claim kindred with poetry, but its powers over the imagination? ”