ABSTRACT
In his Natural History (77 CE), the Roman writer Pliny the Elder describes a competition between two of the greatest painters in ancient Greece, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis took the first turn, and produced a picture of grapes so successful that birds flew up to the place it was hung. Parrhasius then painted a picture of curtains, which was so realistic that Zeuxis, confident that he would win the competition, called out for the curtains to be drawn and Parrhasius’ picture displayed. Having recognized his error, Zeuxis declares Parrhasius the victor, noting that ‘whereas he had deceived birds, Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist’ (Pliny, 1952: 311). This story is among the most famous fables about realism in Western literature, and it tells us a great deal about how the theory of mimesis has been understood. Much like Plato, who lived at roughly the same time as the two painters, Pliny assumes that the purpose of art is to mirror nature. Zeuxis believes himself to have succeeded when he fools birds with his painted grapes. Success for him means erasing the boundary between art and reality. Parrhasius’ painting has no other aim than fooling Zeuxis. Both painters embody Plato’s fear about the confusion mimesis sows in the soul of the viewer
or reader. But they also epitomize the fascination of Western critical theory with the idea of artistic realism.
