Likewise, it is the function of a photographer or a still-life painter not simply
torecordthis vase of flowers, but instead to display or present a vase as an
instance of a kind of thing that may engage human interest, attention, and
feeling from a point of view. There must be a point–an achievement of
illumination of significance for us–to artistic representation. Mere detailed
reproduction of reality is not by itself enough (unlessthatmay have a point in
a certain context). A full body cast sculpture is not necessarily a successful
work; a hologram is not automatically a successful artistic representation.
Aristotle goes on to make it clear that in the case of tragic drama in
particular the point of artistic representation is thecatharsisof emotions.^64
Catharsisis a term in Greek with multiple senses, ranging from that of a
medical purgative to that of clarifying or making clear an object of attention.
To say that a successful tragic drama brings about the catharsis of emotions
is to say that it makes clear the natures of the objects toward which emotions
are appropriately felt: it presents the genuinely pitiable and fearfulaspitiable
and fearful. In doing so, it further engages and trains the emotions, so that
the right emotion is felt toward the right object on the right occasion.
These points about tragic drama naturally extend to other media of art.
Epic presents the heroic as heroic; history painting presents terrible, pitiable,
or heroic actions as such; landscape painting presents a scene as beneficent
for human life or awe-inspiring; architecture affords and presents a sense of
space and its uses for work or worship or family life. The special point of
artisticrepresentation, over and above cultural representations in general,
involves the highlighted and emphasized engagement of feeling. Not only are
meaning and truth presented, but the sort of meaning and truth that are in
question in art have distinctively to do with how it is appropriate to feel
about and respond to the presented subject matter.
Aristotle further develops a richly worked out account of the specific
subject matter, plot, characters, thought, diction, spectacle or staging, and
song that are proper to a successful tragic drama in particular.^65 In each case,
the proper form of the element in question is derived from the account of
how that element may best contribute to the aim or end of the tragedy.a fully cultural representation that illuminates kinds of things and our interests in them
as is poetry.(^64) Seeibid., p. 48. (^65) Seeibid., pp. 7ff.
48 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art