destructive: an attempt to defend the pleasure of art, in particular that of poetry. He points to the childhood inclination toward imitative games as proof of the naturalness of mimetic art as well as the universality of pleasure taken from such representations. This pleasure he labels as one of understanding, writing, “what happens is that as they [human beings in general] view them (imitations) they come to understand and work out what each thing is” (48b). He repeats this idea of art as philosophical due to its mimetic qualities in chapter 5.5 – claiming poetry to be “more philosophical and serious than history” (51b). Poetry, according to Aristotle, uses higher levels of cognition in its contemplation of “what would happen” than history’s mere statement of “what has happened.” In such a way, Aristotle bases his entire defense of poetry on this theory of art as mimesis; so then, what happens to art analysis when the art world moves beyond mimetic art?
Duchamp’s Fountain rejects classification as imitation, merely by representing
nothing more than itself. It does not seek to stand for anything other than its urinal‐ness, it neither represents nor imitates and therefore defies even analysis by the theory of art as mimesis. The work of Mark Rothko, on the other hand, has the capability for some contrast with the Aristotelian theory. Rothko completely abandons representation, instead painting solid blocks of color, relying on the relationships between the colors rather than any form, recognizable or not, that he creates. His pieces, rather than imitating forms and thus transferring emotion from the form to the viewer through katharsis as Aristotle expects, use inherent human reaction to their colors to evoke the emotion in the viewer first hand. Rothko’s work has been said to elicit greater viewer reactions than any other work of art ‐ those who view a Rothko interact with their raw emotions, unfiltered by the forms and stories of others. Interestingly enough, Aristotle writes, “if someone were to apply
48
First-Year Writing 2010