Art and mimesis: in the footsteps of Aristotle.

Abstract

This article shares, with another previously published, the generic title of “Art and Mimesis”. It is in the subtitles that it is possible to distinguish them: the previous research is subtitled “The Philosophical Controversy”, while the present paper is subtitled “In the Footsteps of Aristotle”. Here we abandon the hermeneutic interpretation of texts to present the practical consequences derived from Aristotelian mimesis: we are going to enter the world of fictions, an integral part of artistic achievement. First of all, it is necessary to distinguish between philosophical fictions (frame fictions) and scientific fictions (ad hoc fictions), from artistic fictions (transitional fictions). The latter allow us to establish intermediate levels of reality between the creative subject and the work he creates, which leads us directly to Donald Winnicott's psychological theory of the transitional object. Following the thinking of this eminent English psychologist, we can classify transitional fictions as non-immersive, where the artist and his work are perfectly delimited, and immersive fictions, where the creator slips into a world of meanings superimposed on reality as an involuntary consequence of an immersion vector that acts as a trigger for the fictions. An epistemology of the poiesis (to use J.-J. Nattiez’s terminology to characterize the creative act) with psychological and genetic roots, is put into practice on the basis of the transitional object. Our hypothesis is that the artistic work functionate as a derivation of it. In the same way that the transitional object is a determining element in the psychological development of the child, the work in its evolution is also a form of evolution for the creator; once the creative process that gave rise to it is over, the artist will be free to reconstruct his or her identifications and begin a new work. The paper presents afterwards the musicological discipline named Musical Heuristics, explaining its background and objectives, as well as its need to exist as a complement to musical semiology and the analyses derived from it. One of the propositions of Musical Heuristics is the perceptual reconstruction of contemporary musical works, a direct consequence of Aristotle's mimesis. This paper culminates with a methodological description of its application, proposing to complement the reconstruction work carried out with its semiological analysis.