Abstract

It is the argument of this dissertation that the ancient view that pictorial representation is a matter of imitation--that a picture depicts its object or motif in virtue of the fact that it is intended to resemble it--is substantially correct. ;The discussion proceeds by historical surveys of three dominant accounts of representation: the traditional imitation view, the view that a representation is an idealization of what it represents, and the view that representations shape or articulate their objects. I describe the latter view as the dominant one in discussions of pictorial representation in this century, and I associate it with the philosophers John Dewey, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Nelson Goodman, as well as the art historian Ernst Gombrich. It is on the background of this more or less standard view that I attempt to revive the imitation theory. ;For that purpose, I enlist the aid of Flint Schier and his important recent book Deeper Into Pictures. It is Schier's opinion that his theory, which he terms "natural generativity," lends limited support to the traditional imitation view. I argue that natural generativity is even more compatible with the traditional view than Schier allows