mere stroke were already a means of incipiently presenting a three-
dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface.
Yet these facts about presentation of a subject matter in the arts raise
considerable problems.Howis representation achieved in various media?
Does representation centrally involve any likeness or resemblance (as seems
to be the case in much visual depiction) between representer and repre-
sented, or does it involve centrally the manipulation of syntactically struc-
tured conventional codes (as in linguistic representation)? Is the same sense
of“representation”(with different means of achieving it) involved in differ-
ent media of art? Does the value of a work of art depend upon what it
represents, and if so, how? Is representationality even necessary for art? Is
it sufficient?
In any straightforward sense of“represents,”representationality is clearly
present in many regions of practice and is not a sufficient condition for art.
A legislator represents constituents, and a bottle cap may represent the
position of a player in a model of a play to be run in a game, yet neither
the legislator nor the bottle cap is art. In the more restricted sense of“(visual)
depiction,”representationality is clearly not necessary for art. Salman Rush-
die’sMidnight’s Childrenpresents many events, but it does not visually depict
them, in that one cannot see the events presented in the words on the page,
nor do works of music make subject matter available to vision. Nonetheless,
without“aboutness”of some kind, there seems to be no art, but only empty
decorativeness.Aristotle on imitation
Aristotle in thePoeticshelps us to think about how and why this might be so.
In developing his theory of the nature and value of tragic drama, Aristotle
begins by distinguishing three forms of human, conceptually formed activity
and their associated products.Theoria, the activity of theoretical knowing,
has as its product knowledge (episteme), that is, the explicit presentation of
general relations among kinds of things. For example, all triangles in Euclid-
ean geometry are such that the sum of their angles is identical to a straight
line.Praxis, the activity of doing, has as its product objects or alterations of
objects in order to satisfy desires: for example, the building of a bridge or the
managing of the affairs of a city.Poesis, the activity of nonoriginal or imita-
tive making, has as its productimitations(mimemata) or presentations of the26 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art