On Beauty and Imitation (Daniel McInerny, June 3rd, 2024, Imaginative Conservative)
Art as address to sacred order saw itself, to borrow a term from J.R.R. Tolkien, as sub-creation. It was human making done from materials provided by sacred order, for the sake of contemplating and celebrating that order, under the aspect of its beauty.
Such work was driven by an understanding of art as mimēsis. This Greek word is often translated as “imitation” or “re-presentation.” Art as mimesis re-presents, makes present again, the sensible and intelligible forms of things in media other than their own, for the sensible and intelligible delight of an audience.
When we take in Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of Sir Thomas More, Thomas More is truly present in the portrait. Not, of course, in all his living three-dimensionality. But the sensible look of his features, and of his bearing, are right there, amazingly, on Holbein’s two-dimensional canvas, as are, even more amazingly, certain signs of the character of the man who would not sacrifice God’s law to the whims of a human prince.
But then one day, something happened to culture and to art.
Culture no longer saw itself as the address to sacred order. Indeed, culture began to style itself as emancipation from that order.