Ramos, Ma. Angelica P.

2009-20177

CONTRADICTIONS:
Understanding Art through Aristotle’s Poetics and Da Vinci’s Thoughts on Art and Life

Coming from two different forms of expression, Aristotle’s Poetics and Da Vinci’s

Thoughts on Art and Life provide us with notions on art as a practice and as an output. Although

they are coming from different and, somehow, opposing directions, in terms of superiority, there

are certain insights from their musings that give us a more holistic understanding of how art is

shown by literature and visual arts. This paper will attempt to inspect the similarities and

differences that both texts offer in establishing what is art in literature, visual arts and in general.

Both works identify art as a form of imitation that intends to present what is seen in

nature in a different form or medium. Aristotle further establishes this notion of art as an

imitation by identifying other manners in which this representation may occur such as in a

medium of color, form or voice. His ​Poetics uses literary language as its lens in terms of

identifying what is art and aesthetics. His form of imitation analyzes how as an art form,

language may be a representation of what is real. Although the manner or medium by which this

imitation is executed varies from one literary form to another. His focus in this paper is mainly in

theater where imitation is possible when the “objects of imitation are men in action and… either

as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are” (Aristotle 4). If there is a deviation from

that which is real in nature for these characters, how is this then a matter of imitation? This is

where the role of the poet comes into play and his capacity to integrate his own manner of artistic

imitation through narration. This variation made by the poet in his language places the imitation

into its specific genre from comedy to tragedy and other forms.
 Just Like Aristotle, Da Vinci’s text banks on this idea of art as an imitation of nature but

rather than variations based on the language or represented characters, art imitating nature

focuses on how the perspective of the artists reinterprets what is in nature or in his surroundings

through a concrete and tangible expression like painting. Although a reproduction, art still seeks

an “inward purpose and outward expression” (Da Vinci xv). Da Vinci is very keen on seeing art

as a manner of seeking what is seen by the artist in nature and how it builds on and reflects on

our own realities. Much more than language’s ideal of narrating what is in nature, painting seeks

to merge what is real from what is being experienced by the artist himself.

If art as an imitation from these two texts may have overlapped in some points, art in

terms of the senses shoots us into two different directions of the argument. Another point of

analysis that we may take is on how notions on what is art heavily relies on the form in which

they are expressed. Da Vinci focuses on painting while Aristotle uses theater as his baseline of

identifying how art should be and how it is found. One prominent argument that Da Vinci

proposes is the superiority of painting over poetry in terms of how it is perceived by its audience.

Through the physicality of paintings, Da Vinci argues that a painting provides a superior form of

art compared to poetry since it is not hindered by language which may be only accessible to its

speakers or those who understand its technicalities. This is also strengthened by his argument of

how a painting is perceived by the eye which is the windows of a soul. The divinity and beauty

in nature is said to be perceived wholly through vision while poetry uses words to represent what

can be easily shown by a painting.

If this inferiority of poetry is to be challenged through Aristotle’s Poetics, one possible

perspective to take on is how the nature of language, like being composed of multiple sounds
that creates multitudes of meanings, taps into so much more than a single sensation through its

words. If one is capable of understanding the complexities of language and nuances of its rhythm

in the song or poetry included, then the reader may access not only his sense of sight but his

other senses as well from taste, touch, smell and hearing. The marrying of all of these sensations

may possibly lead to a harmony of elements which produces pleasure.

Pleasure caused by finding beauty, art and harmony is one of the greatest pleasures for

humankind. Both texts agree that harmony within its elements is what causes pleasure for the

artist, poet and the audience. For Aristotle, pleasure in theater can be achieved in two ways,

through the technicalities of the literary form or through its narrative. First is the physical

harmony of words with each other through the rhythm, meter, rhyme, and tune found in the

literary texts or it can also pertain to the plot of the play. He also refers to this as “language

embellished” wherein there is harmony found within the tragedy that contains its own forms of

rhythm or song. Second is how the plot successfully narrates the moments of “recognition” and

“reversal”. Recognition and reversal is a point in the narrative where a realization by a character,

a set of characters, or the audience is either present or should be present but was not found. This

is what can be deemed as pleasurable since it serves as the force that pushes the narrative

forward to possible surprises and also invokes reaction or understanding from the audience.

For Da Vinci, harmony is observable through what is present in the painting. The

elements of art are given a closer look in terms of its proportions, emphasis and balance. The

elements found within a painting dictates how pleasurable it is based on the unity of it as a single

piece. It may relate to the use of light and darkness, colors or the lack of it, or details and sizes

dedicated to each image or object found within the painting. The oneness of the painting as an
artwork should effectively express the perception of the artist so that its audience may have a full

experience of what is being communicated.

The accuracy or relatability of what is seen in nature, what is perceived by the senses, and

what is pleasurable to the audience all relies on the final point of analysis in both texts,

universality. In terms of ​Poetics, universality pertains to “how a person of a certain type will on

occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity; and it is this universality

at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages”(Aristotle 8). The perspective

taken by Aristotle here is how poets although imitating nature, reality or history have the

capacity to make unknown characters pleasurable to most if not all audiences. This is where the

deviations in imitation and elements of a Tragedy come together to make the narrative appealing

to various audiences despite the difference in time or environment since human nature is what’s

being mimicked or imitated. Da Vinci also speaks of this universality in terms of time, wherein

the longevity of the painting. “Time in a few years destroys this harmony, but this does not occur

in the case of beauty depicted by the painter, because time preserves it for long” (Da Vinci 75). If

Aristotle speaks of universality in terms of relatability to the characters, Da Vinci sees

universality as a physical manifestation of that which is beautiful.

It is challenging to put both texts side by side since they approach art from different

forms and as different types of artists but the similarities, contradictions and nuances that both

offers allow us to gain a more holistic understanding of art in terms of its nature, its effect to our

senses, as a source of pleasure and beauty.

 Bibliography

Aristotle. ​The Poetics of Aristotle​. Translated by SH Butcher, Project Gutenberg. ​Project

Gutenberg.​ Accessed 5 October 2020.

Da Vinci, Leonardo. ​Thoughts on Art and Life​. Edited by Lewis Einstein, translated by Maurice

Baring, Boston, The Merrymount Press, 1906. ​Project Gutenberg​. Accessed 5 October

2020.