The title of this post was inspired by a comment made by my ten year old sister made when I was telling her about Plato. She asked if Plato invented Play-dough, and I told her no, he would probably disapprove of play-dough, because it is used by children to sculpt their versions of real life people and object, in other words, an imitation of an imitation.
While I initially disagreed with Plato's views on art as an imitation, and of no real significance, I was out of context. I didn't undertand the mindset of Plato's time. They believed that there was a world of ideas, a world of 'forms' which were the most perfect forms, created by the gods. Then these ideas, these forms, are given shape by craftsmen, and loose some of their perfection. So reproducing these objects as art is only taking them further away from the world of forms, and further away from perfection. Once I understood this, I could understand why Plato seemed so down on art. It was like making a photocopy of a picture in a book, and then making a photocopy of the photocopy. The resolution will be far withdrawn from the original picture.
My questionis, do we in today's society hold art to a higher standard, and consider it more infulential, or do our school's budget cuts on art programs stand as a symbol to our view on the importance of art?
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