ART & THE

PERCEPTION OF
REALITY
Perception in art stands for a complex
relation between visual stimuli and a
personal understanding of them.

It is a theoretical postulate that aims to

clarify the relation between artworks
and individual opinions and
evaluations.

Far from being a universally

established matrix of understanding
art, perception is conditioned by a
context from which observation and
evaluation are made.
Instead of general models of understanding, it is
conditioned by numerous factors, including
political, social, cultural, gender and racial.

It affects how we see art and what meanings we

attribute to it, but is also an active factor in artistic
creation.

It would be hard to make assertions about the

meaning of art without the previously established
notions of value that come from multifaceted
perceptual conditionings.
The views of both an artist and an
observer contribute to the
understanding of art, and the first
is not distinguished in its
importance from the second.
 PERCEPTION

As seen from numerous historical examples perception affects

the meaning we attribute to art, and often such understandings
change over the course of time.

Some universal postulates may persist, but most of them are

dependent on the particular social mores of a given time.

Perception and our opinions are closely linked.

Turning to art, we can see that throughout history evaluation of
artistic styles changed over the course of time, which
contributes to the above assertion of a connectedness between
our opinions and perception of art.

At its most basic, the representational theory states that the

fundamental, definitive quality of art is the ability to capture
some aspect of reality.

In short, if it's not a reflection of something that actually exists,

then it's not art.
 PERCEPTION

This means that art can be defined foremost as

an extension of human perception; it's a way to
reflect the ways that the mind perceives and
understands reality.

This makes representational theory distinct

from other ideologies, such as the expressive
theory, which sees the fundamental role of art
as the expression of emotion.
 ANCIENT GREECE

The roots of representational theory date all the way back to ancient Greece, when imitation theory was
the foundation of artistic principles.

According to the ancient Greeks, the definitive role of art is to imitate nature in its most perfect forms,
which is why everybody in Greek sculpture is so impossibly (and perhaps frustratingly) good-looking.
Later theorists would revise imitation theory,
claiming that the purpose of art was not to strictly
imitate nature, but to represent it in any form.

The representational theory has been an important

part of Western art since the fall of Rome, after
which art became less naturalistic for a while. The
direct imitation of reality in art was seen as an act of
hubris - a human attempt to recreate the creation of
God.

However, through slight abstractions, artists could

still represent reality without blaspheming.
To these and later theorists, art should
represent reality, but could do so in a
myriad of ways.

Artists can focus on the ugly, the

horrific, and even things that cannot be
physically seen.

A perfect example is the representation

of God.

While God cannot be seen, the figure

of God or the presence of God is one
of the most ubiquitous motifs of
Western art.
The job of art is not to directly
imitate the appearance of God,
since God cannot be seen, but to
find ways of representing divinity.
 REFERENCES

Retrieved from https://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/building_lessons/formal_analysis.html (Links to an external site.)

Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_(arts) (Links to an external site.)
Retrieved from https://aesthetics.univie.ac.at/research/art-emotion/ (Links to an external site.)
Retrieved from http://www.edu.pe.ca/rural/class_webs/art/meaning.htm (Links to an external site.)
Retrieved from https://www.widewalls.ch/perception-in-art/ (Links to an external site.)
Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/representational-theory-of-art-definition-characteristics.html