The Beauty of Mimesis and the Beauty of the Abstract: Underlying Principles

In this essay, I argue that an essential and basic biological need to survive is predicated on the ability to find order and pattern and hence a certain hard wiring for aesthetic beauty. This manifests in art and as new forms emerge, so new conceptualizations of the aesthetic develop. In this way theory and practice operate in tandem, although the former generally precedes the latter. In arguing for such an innate disposition, the search for such clarity is able to include not only mimetic art, but later developments in the abstract dimension.