Mimesis și reprezentare: Platon, Aristotel și paradigma artei islamice
Mimesis and Representation: Plato, Aristotle and the Paradigm of Islamic Art

Summary/Abstract: The views on mimesis supported both by Plato and Aristotle are two different ways of understanding representational art. If Plato sees representational art more as a world-reflecting device, similarto a (deformed and deforming) mirror, Aristotle understands it as a way of creating a world by reproducing the functioning mechanism of reality, by understanding the universals and by expressing them in works of art. Both theories see work of art as representation, while the Islamic paradigm of art, even if not explicitly theorized, lets us conclude that works of art should be referential by resemblance rather than representational. This fact encourages the development of an metaphor of aesthetics that requires a religiously informed eye to be proper understood.While the theories of Plato and Aristotle are both rooted in philosophical thought, the Islamic view over art is rooted in religious thought and, as we argue in the present study, this is the reason for which the latter falls into none of the two types of understanding the art (as world-reflecting or world-creating) to which western thought is tributary.

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