The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's AesthetikHegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Aesthetics
(_ββ_) It lags so far behind Nature. In other words art is limited in
its means of representation. It can only produce one-sided illusions,
a semblance, to take one example, of real fact addressed exclusively
to _one_ sense. And, moreover, if it does wholly rely on the bare
aim of _mere_ imitation, instead of Nature's life all it gives us
ever is the mere pretence of its substance. For some such reason the
Turks, who are Mohammedans, will not put up with any pictures or
copies of men and other objects. When James Bruce, in his travels
through Abyssinia, showed a painted fish to a Turk, that worthy was
at first astonished; but, quickly recovering himself, he made answer
as follows: "If this fish shall rise up against you at the last day,
and say, 'You have certainly given me a body, but no living soul,'
how are you going to justify yourself against such a complaint?" The
prophet himself, moreover, if we may believe the Sunna, said to the
two women Ommi Hubiba and Ommi Selma, who told him of certain pictures
in the Aethiopian churches: "These pictures will rise up in judgment
against their creators on the Last Day." There are, no doubt, no less
examples of completely deceptive imitation. The painted grapes of
Zeuxis, have been accepted from antiquity and long after as an instance
of art's triumph, and also of that of the principle of imitation,
because, we are told, actual doves pecked at them. We might add to
this ancient example that more modern one of Bültner's monkey, which
bit to pieces a painted cockchafer in Rösel's "Diversions of Insects,"
and was consequently forgiven by his master, although he destroyed by
this means a fine copy of the precious work, because he proved thus
the excellence of its illustrations. But if we will only reflect a
moment on such and other instances we can only come to the conclusion
that instead of praising works of art, because they have deceived
_even_ doves and monkeys, the foolish people ought to be condemned
who imagine that the quality of a work of art is enhanced if they are
able to proclaim an effect of the same so miserable as the supreme
and last word they can say for it. In short, to sum up, we may state
emphatically that in the mere business of imitation art cannot maintain
its rivalry with Nature, and if it makes the attempt it must look like
a worm which undertakes to crawl after an elephant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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