76 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



men and his work remains alive for a more or less extensive 

 period. '8 



Art as Imitation and Expression 



A theory of art which stresses its 'public' or social function 

 usually conceives of the work of art as an imitation of reality. But 

 artistic 'reality' is an elusive quality, and the tendency in modern 

 aesthetics has been rather to stress the expressive role of art. 

 Iredell Jenkins, in a suggestive analysis, attempts to relate the 

 realistic and idealistic elements in Taine to the doctrines of art 

 as imitation and as expression respectively. ^ What exactly is 

 Taine's definition of art, and what parts do imitation and expres- 

 sion play in it? 



Taine summarized the steps through which he had passed in 

 order to arrive at his definition as follows: 'At first we thought 

 that the object of art was to imitate sensible appearances. Then 

 separating material from intellectual imitation, we found that 

 what it desired to reproduce in sensible appearances is the rela- 

 tionships of parts. Finally, remarking that relationships are, and 

 ought to be, modified in order to obtain the highest results of art, 

 we proved that if we study the relationships of parts it is to make 

 predominant an essential character.' ^^ 



Note that Taine begins by setting aside architecture and 

 music, the 'pure' or non-representational arts, and considering 

 only poetry, sculpture, and painting, the so-called 'imitative' 

 arts. He then follows his usual procedure of abstraction, passing, 

 in a logically ordered exposition, from literal copying to true 

 imitation, from the particular to the general, from the real to the 

 ideal. Starting with 'exact imitation' of 'the living model', ii he 

 goes on to emphasize that 'exact' here does not imply photo- 

 graphic resemblance, but rather the logic of nature, 'the relation- 

 ships and mutual dependence of parts'. 12 Further, these relation- 

 ships are not mechanically abstracted, but rather modified 'in such 

 a way as to make apparent the esse?itial character of the object . . .'.^^ 



Hence we arrive at the following definition of art: 'The end of a 

 work of art is to manifest some essential or salient character, con- 

 sequently some important idea, clearer and more completely 

 than is attainable from real objects. Art accomplishes this end by 

 employing a group of connected parts, the relationships of which 

 it systematically modifies. In the three imitative arts of sculpture, 

 painting, and poetry, these groups correspond to real objects.' ^^ 



