In his now classic conversations with Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann describes how on February 26, 1824, the then 74-year-old prince of German literature showed him a series of engravings and drawings, pointing out what he considered the most excellent of each genre. Goethe also handed Eckermann a few etched sheets by the famous animal painter Roos, and asked him what he thought. A quick characterization of the etchings followed: “They were all of sheep, in every posture and situation. The simplicity of their countenances, the ugliness and shagginess of their fleece, were represented with the utmost fidelity to nature.” Upon which the aged genius reflected, as eloquently as meaningfully: ‘I always feel uneasy,’ Goethe said, ‘when I look at these beasts. Their state, so limited, dull, gaping and dreaming, excites in me such sympathy, that I fear I shall become a sheep and I almost think the artist must have been one. At all events, it is most wonderful how Roos has been able to think and feel himself into the very soul of these creatures, so as to make the internal character peer with such force through the outward covering. Here you see what a great talent can do when it keeps steady to subjects which are congenial with its nature’ (Eckermann, 1998, 46–7). These considerations immediately confront us with an important characteristic of visual art, i.e. its capacity for imitation or realistic representation. In the ensuing reflections, both poets emphasized time and again the realism and accuracy of Roos' depictions of not only sheep, but dogs, cats and animals of prey too. They pay particular attention to the resemblance between the etchings and reality. Roos's animal scenes are not simply equated with nature; they are also compared to it. It is the resemblance between the representation of nature and nature itself that demands all attention here. There is a suggestion of an “as if-relationship” to nature: apparently Roos's talent is that he, like no other, is able to create an illusion, to provide the spectator with an image in which the actual animals can be recognized.
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Further Reading
Classical sources on the theory of mimesis:
Plato (428-348 BC), The republic, translated by Robin Waterfield, Oxford/New York: in Oxford University Press, 2008. (Originally published in 1994).
Aristotle, On poetics, translated by Seth Benardete and Michael Davis, South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2002.
Classical source on the theory of imitation:
Charles Batteux, Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe (The fine arts reduced to one single principle), Paris, in Aux Amateurs de livres, 1989 (Originally published in 1746).
Classical source on realism in film theory:
Andrè Bazin, What is cinema?, essays selected and translated by Hugh Gray; foreword by Jean Renoir; new foreword by Dudley Andrew, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004 (Originally published in English in 1967, in French 1958).
Classical sources on criticism of the theory of imitation:
Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a study in the psychology of pictorial representation, New York: Bollingen Foundation, Pantheon Books, 1961. Latest edition: London, Phaidon, 1968.
Nelson Goodman, Languages of art: an approach to a theory of symbols, Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. Chapter one contains his radical and well-known defense of conventionalism.
For interesting defenses of the neo-naturalist theory of pictorial representation:
Flint Schier, Deeper into pictures: an essay on pictorial representation, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Noël Carroll, Philosophy of art. A contemporary introduction, London/New York: Routledge, 1999.
Works on Recommended works on the theory of mimesis:
Göran Sörbom, Mimesis and art: studies in the origin and early development of an aesthetic vocabulary, Stockholm: Svenska bokförlaget (Bonnier), 1966.
Stephen Halliwell, The aesthetics of mimesis, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Samuel IJsseling, Mimesis: on appearing and being, Kampen, The Netherlands: in Kok Phairos Pub. House, 1997.
Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wolf, Mimesis: culture, art, society, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995.
Michael Taussig, Mimesis and alterity: a particular history of the senses, New York: Routledge, 1993.
Arne Melberg, Theories of mimesis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
In the text on Giacometti I refer to two French Publications:
Alberto Giacometti, Écrits (in English: Writings), presented by Michel Leiris and Jacques Dupin, Paris: Hermann, 1990.
Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, Alberto Giacometti, Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Françaises, 1984.
On Alberto Giacometti:
Herbert Matter and Mercedes Matter, Alberto Giacometti, London: Thames and Hudson, 1987; in New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987.
James Lord, Giacometti: a biography, New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux, 1985.
David Sylvester, Looking at Giacometti, New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1996.
Laurie Wilson, Alberto Giacometti: myth, magic and the man, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
For Goethe's reflection on Roos, see:
Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann, Cambridge, MA and New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 1998.
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(2009). The Imitation Theory. In: Thinking Art. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5638-3_2
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