Renaissance Art From the Point of View of Plato

Plato

Plato had a love-hate relationship with the arts. He must have had some love for the arts, considering he talks most them often, and his remarks testify that he paid close attending to what he saw and heard. He was also a fine literary stylist and a keen story-teller; in fact he is said to have been a poet earlier he encountered Socrates and became a philosopher. Some of his dialogues are real literary masterpieces. On the other hand, he constitute the arts threatening. He proposed sending the poets and playwrights out of his ideal Republic, or at least censoring what they wrote; and he wanted music and painting severely censored. The arts, he thought, are powerful shapers of grapheme. Thus, to train and protect ideal citizens for an ideal social club, the arts must be strictly controlled.

Plato'southward influence on western culture more often than not is a very strong one, and this includes a stiff influence on the arts, and on theories of art. In the case of the arts and aesthetic theory that influence is generally indirect, and is best understood if one knows a little chip about his philosophy.

Plato saw the changing physical world as a poor, decaying copy of a perfect, rational, eternal, and invariable original. The beauty of a bloom, or a sunset, a slice of music or a love affair, is an imperfect copy of Beauty Itself. In this world of changing appearances, while you might catch a glimpse of that ravishing perfection, it will e'er fade. It�southward just a pointer to the perfect dazzler of the eternal. The aforementioned goes for other Essences, like Justice. Anyone knows that Existent Justice is also much to promise for in this corrupt globe. The best you can find is a rough approximation. To take a 3rd example, the most carefully drawn circle turns out to be irregular if you inspect it closely enough. Like The Point, The Line, and all geometric shapes, The Circle is a mathematical ideal. Information technology is not possible to draw a Real Circle, but only an imperfect physical copy (or instance) of 1. (If yous have ever striven to acheive an ideal, you lot may have take some sympathy with this role of Plato's philosophy.)

Beauty, Justice, and The Circle are all examples of what Plato called Forms or Ideas. Other philosophers take chosen them Universals. Many particular things tin can have the course of a circumvolve, or of justice, or dazzler. For Plato, these Forms are perfect Ideals, just they are as well more real than physical objects. He called them "the Really Real". The world of the Forms is rational and unchanging; the earth of physical appearances is child-bearing and irrational, and merely has reality to the extent that it succeeds in imitating the Forms. The heed or soul belongs to the Ideal world; the trunk and its passions are stuck in the muck of the physical world. So the best human life is one that strives to sympathize and to imitate the Forms every bit closely as possible. That life is the life of the heed, the life of the Philosopher (literally, the lover of wisdom). Self command, especially control of the passions, is essential to the soul that wants to avert the temptations of sensuality, greed, and ambition, and move on to the Ideal Earth in the adjacent life.

Of grade at that place is a lot more to Plato�s philosophy than this; merely this is enough groundwork to begin explaining his views virtually the arts. (For more on Plato�s philosophy, visit the library, or check out the online Encyclopedia of Philosophy.) Plato had two theories of fine art. One may exist found in his dialogue The Republic, and seems to be the theory that Plato himself believed. Co-ordinate to this theory, since art imitates concrete things, which in turn imitate the Forms, fine art is always a copy of a copy, and leads us even further from truth and toward illusion. For this reason, also as considering of its power to stir the emotions, art is dangerous. Plato's other theory is hinted at in his shorter dialogue Ion, and in his exquisitely crafted Symposium. According to this theory the artist, perhaps by divine inspiration, makes a better re-create of the True than may be found in ordinary experience. thus the artist is a kind of prophet. Here are some features of the two theories:

one. Art is imitation This is a feature of both of Plato's theories. Of class he was non the start or the last person to think that art imitates reality. The idea was still very stiff in the Renaissance, when Vasari, in his Lives of the Painters, said that "painting is merely the imitation of all the living things of nature with their colors and designs but as they are in nature." It may still exist the well-nigh commonly held theory. Most people still think that a moving-picture show must be a flick of something, and that an artist is someone who tin make a picture that "looks merely similar the real thing". It wasn't until tardily in the nineteenth century that the thought of art as false began to fade from western aesthetics, to be replaced by theories virtually art as expression, art as advice, art equally pure form, art as whatsoever elicits an "aesthetic" response, and a number of other theories.

Then art is imitation. Just what does information technology imitate? Here is where Plato's two theories come in. In the Republic, Plato says that art imitates the objects and events of ordinary life. In other words, a work of art is a copy of a copy of a Form. It is fifty-fifty more of an illusion than is ordinary experience. On this theory, works of fine art are at best entertainment, and at worst a dangerous mirage.

A moment's thought will suggest a mode of building a more art-friendly theory out of Plato'due south philosophy. What if the artist is somehow able to make a truer copy of the Forms than our ordinary experience offers? This theory really appears in Plato's short early dialogue, the Ion. Socrates is questioning a poet named Ion, who recites Homer'southward poetry brilliantly merely is no good at reciting annihilation else. Socrates is puzzled past this; it seems to him that if Ion has an art, or skill, of reciting verse he should exist able to apply his skilled knowledge to other poets as well. He concludes that Ion doesn't really possess skilled noesis. Rather, when he recites Homer, he must be inspired by a god.

The Ion drips with sarcasm. Plato didn't take the "art by divine inspiration" theory very seriously. But many ancient, medieval, and modern artists and aestheticians have institute it irresistible. After all, aren't artists oft inspired? Doesn't their creative genius often produce wonderfully surprising results, most which the artist will say, "I don't know how I did that?" Nigh of import, don't artists show the states the essence of things, and reveal truths that we wouldn't otherwise come across?

The view of the artist as inspired revealer of platonic essences fits well with the spirit of Plato'south Symposium, a dialogue full of speeches in praise of Beloved, in which Socrates gives a compelling pic of the rising from sexual beloved, to the artful appreciation of cute bodies, to the love of cute souls, and finally to the the contemplation of the ideal Form of Beauty itself. The same spirit fills much classic Greek art. Belatedly classical sculpture presents gods and heroes as platonic bodies, built in perfect proportions, and filled with a cool quiet, every bit if they inhabited a perfect and invariable divine world. The classical ideal of the artist as capturing an essence has connected to exert swell power, from the Renaissance rediscovery of the Greek canons of proportion to the twentieth century sculptures of Constantin Brancusi, the paintings of Piet Mondrian, and the color theories of Vasily Kandinsky and the Blue Rider (der Blaue Reiter) group.

The idea of the artist as divinely inspired, or fifty-fifty possessed, has also persisted to the present day. Some of our about mutual fine art vocabulary derives from this idea. For instance, the word "music" derives from the Greek Muses, the demigods who inspired an artist's work. The notion of "genius" is originally the same; your genius was your personal daimon or inspiring spirit. There are countless paintings from the Renaissance which depict a genius of this sort, or an inspiring muse; and there are some which combine the ideas of inspiration and simulated, showing an artist or musician contemplating a divine ideal, and producing art every bit a upshot. An example, which may appear a chip differently to mod eyes than to Renaissance ones, is Titian'south "Venus and Music" (Venere, Amore due east Organista). The idea of genius was strong in the Romantic period, and has certainly not gone away since that fourth dimension!

Problems with the imitation theory . In either of its two versions, as imitations of the globe or fake of an platonic, the imitation theory has problems. It is at least plausible as a theory most representational painting, drawing and sculpture; and it can be stretched to fit some abstract work, as in the case of Brancusi and Mondrian. Only even with such work it leaves a lot out. With an artist like Jackson Pollack it leaves out everything; what do his baste paintings imitate? And how is the theory supposed to work for music? What does music stand for? Plato spoke nearly music representing natural sounds, and emotions, as did Aristotle. simply even if i agrees that music imitates emotions, could i build a theory of music out of this fact alone?

2. Fine art is powerful, and therefore dangerous Poetry, drama, music, painting, trip the light fantastic toe, all stir up our emotions. All of the arts motility people powerfully. They can strongly influence our beliefs, and fifty-fifty our character. For that reason Plato insisted that music (peculiarly music), along with verse and drama and the other arts, should be function of the education of immature citizens in his ideal democracy, but should be strictly censored to present, at first, but the skillful. (That stories and images can shape character may seem obvious enough; simply how does music do this? Plato was much impressed with the theories of Pythagoras, and his number mysticism. Early thinking about geometric ratios was partly inspired by noticing the serial of overtones continued with the vibration of a string. A string, when plucked, vibrates along its whole length, but besides in halves, giving the octave, and in other divisions which give the 5th, the third, and the rest of the overtone series. These are the bell-like higher tones string players produce when they play "harmonics". Plato thought that the right sort of music would help to ready the soul in harmony rather than discord. Merely that meant excluding certain musical modes from the Republic, and keeping simply those that were conducive to a properly ordered soul, i.e., one whose volition ruled its passions at the direction of its reason. Only when immature people were ready should the strength of their graphic symbol be tested by exposing them to depictions of evil, and to the more promiscuous modes of music.)

From Plato to New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani, influential people through the centuries and beyond cultures accept worried nigh the power of the arts to influence, and potentially to corrupt. Information technology can exist hard for a twenty commencement century westerner to sympathise with Plato's severe censorship of the arts. Little if anything is more valuable to us than our liberty; we don't take kindly to others telling usa what nosotros can lookout or listen to or read. We believe in the free exchange of ideas, and let the best idea win. We might even try to justify this idea from Plato's own dialogues. Of grade, Plato did not value freedom then highly as practise we; he thought that freedom with no limits and no proper training would consequence in no good. In fact, he thought it would exit the mass of people vulnerable to deception, manipulation, and eventual enslavement by a tyrant. In spite of this, he agreed with modern people nigh the free exchange of ideas. There was no other way to arrive at truth, in his view. His problem with the arts was that they operated by images rather than by ideas, and thus that they might cloud the truth rather than clarifying information technology.

Perhaps a bit of "sympathy for the devil" is possible here. The almost famous summary of Plato'south philosophy is the apologue of the Cave, found in Book VII of his Republic. In that location Plato asks readers to imagine prisoners chained to a bench, facing the wall of a deep cave. Behind them is a six-foot wall, backside that a fire, and in between the fire and the wall walk actors conveying puppets on sticks. All the prisoners can meet are the shadows bandage past the puppets. That is their world, and they think it Reality. Imagine that a prisoner is somehow released. At first he or she volition stumble in the dark, and exist blinded by the fire, but then come to realize that the shadows are copies of the puppets. The liberated prisoner stumbles further upwardly, all the mode out the mouth of the cave and into the sunlight. There, when the sunblindness goes away, the prisoner sees the existent things of which the puppets themselves are copies. Finally, he or she is able to run across the sun, by whose light the real things are visible.

Why would Plato have seen the arts as shadows on the wall of the cave, rather than as shining symbols of the truthful spiritual globe exterior? The answer is that he saw both potentials. If he did not see the possibility that art could reveal truth and class character in a good mode, he would not have recommended music and stories for the young. Simply why so much accent on the seductive shadow potential of art? Put the Apologue of the Cave into its obvious 21st century version, and one answer begs to be given. The prisoner becomes a burrow spud, tied to the television, and taking the images and myths purveyed by the ads and the shows equally the way things are. Are those images and myths powerful? Practise they shape our motion picture of ourselves and the globe? Do they distract us from knowing who nosotros actually are, what is really best for us, who would exist a expert political leader? The questions answer themselves. (Only for a particularly powerful, detailed description of just how they practise so, see the works of Stuart Ewen, particularly All Consuming Images and PR!) Plays and public oratory were the media and propaganda of Plato's day, and painting, statuary and music ofttimes served similar ends. Think "media", "propaganda", and Amusement Tonight, rather than "fine art", and it is easier to gain some sympathy for Plato's views. Information technology is surely a chief challenge of our time to enable gratuitous, honest, challenging advice while resisting the unreasoned power of advertising imagery and media hype. Whatever one thinks of Plato'southward solution to this problem, I suggest that this is i of the bug that elicited his proposals for astringent censorship of the arts he so manifestly loved and had been trained in. The solution may not appeal, just the problem is a real 1.

Plato's influence came into the medieval European tradition through the filter of Neoplatonism, a much subsequently modification of Platonic teachings that flourished in the centuries just before and after the time of Jesus. The nigh famous neo-Platonist was Plotinus. Plotinus and the other neo-Platonists made much of the idea of Beauty, and the soul'southward quest for it, as described in the Symposium. Through neoplatonism, Plato's second theory (art as imitation of eternal Dazzler and eternal Truth) became the aqueduct of his influence on the western center ages and the renaissance.

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Source: http://users.rowan.edu/~clowney/aesthetics/philos_artists_onart/plato.htm

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