is it art....or an idea.....or reality?

This notion of art being only a base form of imitation struck me as an interesting viewpoint. Plato’s take on the matter says that all art is simply a mere imitation of reality, and that this is harmful to people trying to take something away from the art. I had a hard time following Plato’s thoughts on ideas versus reality versus art though. If ideas are the only true meaning of something, then how can the reality of that something be any less meaningful than the idea of it? For instance, how can the reality of a nice mountain scene be less meaningful than the idea of it? Reality is grounded; there is no changing it. In my opinion, an idea of something is really just an imitation of the reality, as one person’s ideas on a particular object can be vastly different than somebody else’s take on the same thing. In this respect, art is just an extension of an individual’s take on reality and is not supposed to be an accurate depiction of reality. After all, if I wanted to see the Matterhorn I could simply go and see it in person. If I wanted to see an person’s personal depiction of the mountain, I could go look at a painting of it knowing full well that I am not viewing reality. The same holds true for other mediums besides paintings.

Aristotle’s take makes more sense to me. He countered Plato by claiming that instead of art being intrinsically bad and distorting people’s view of reality, it can actually be a good thing. Art can appeal to individual’s senses and educate them about life, providing cathartic effects. People imitate things they see all the time. Think of a pretty sunset. Obviously there is no way for us to recreate that phenomenon, though we can attempt to capture our feelings about it through mediums we know how to use—things such as paintings or poetry. In a sense, we are imitating the sunset, just in a way that is feasible to us. That is how art works. Art is merely our perception of something and should not be confused with reality.