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In researching the historical usage of the term "mimesis", an important term that well-encapsulates the semantics of artwork, or the effect that the syntax (the overall rhythm and ordering of the art-object) has on people, I came upon the online works of Stefan Beyst, a retired philosophy of art and history of modern art lecturer at a school in Belguim. There appears to be much of merit in his work, and I've already printed out several of his essays for close study. He made a strong case for the resurgent usage of "memesis" in aesthetics and I am firmly behind that move. Doing so reinforces the lineage of aesthetics/art philosophy all the way back to Plato and Aristotle, who both explored the term in their own uneven yet highly influential ways.

The reason I like "memesis" (here for the audible pronunciation) is that, as I wrote above, it is perfect as a general overview of the perceptual work that the art object stimulates in audiences. Art's work is "mimesis" in that it conjures something whole, something full, something of a world. Including Abigail Housen's important work on developmental stages of perception means that the entire dimension of "audience response" is thus best understood as developmental mimesis— or in other words, stages of communicable realms. I use "communicable" because perception by audiences requires that the art object provide something responsible (here, responsible means "able to be responded to"). Following Beyst, I suggest that this is the condition that an artists's creation must meet in order to be considered art—its "work" must evoke mimesis. If it does not, it is not art.

McLuhan's insight that "the medium is the message" dictates that we consider how media used for presentation (inclusive of the inherent objective properties of each discipline) serve to fundamentally order consciousness/perception regardless of particular content. The underlying narrative structure of films or literature, for example, invisibly impacts our awareness no matter what the story entails. This work is silent, without us knowing about it. This is the visceral effect art has on us—almost without our permission. Internet-based cyber art, as another example, fosters multiperspectivity in perception no matter what topics/subjects/content fill the webpages. Merely perceiving the medium/discipline is, as McLuhan says, the message. He further suggests that the content of every medium is another medium. In fiction, the content would typically include sentences, which are mediums for various sub-media, such as metaphors, allusion, and so on.

It is clear, however, that a distinction is usefully drawn between media/discipline and message/mimesis. The medium is crucial to the "banks of the river", but still a river flows through those banks. That flow is precisely the "work" that the art object stirs forth and catalyzes. As I have said, the work done by art is mimesis. Representations, memories, stories, semi-consciousness associations, dreams, hallucinations and so on all might be irrigated by the banks of the medium and discipline of art, but what is different is that whereas the medium/discipline is more or less objective and material, all things mimesis are interpreted. Housen outlines five broad stages by which, in her study, people interpret paintings; the same painting can stir five stages, or levels of perceptual work done, depending upon the capacity of the viewer to consider increasing numbers of perspectives upon the visual art object.

I suggest that each stage is a stage of mimesis. In the first stage, to the extent that the viewer considers the art object at all, it is merely to remind him or her of something else that may have nothing all all to do with the painting. But still there is a "reminder" or "evoking" stirred by the object. Whereas in the fifth stage of mimesis, the viewer is able to lay multiple perspectives upon their consideration of the art object (formal, intentional, historical, psychological, social, and so on) and thus the mimesis here is of multiplicity. The interpretation thus is richer; the perceived representation more granular.

And because mimesis is necessarily a cultural phenomena, it involves the sharing of each participating human's perceptive aspects. Mimesis is intersubjective. In perceiving art, we enter into the realm of shared subject, which includes large- and small-scale myth, archetypes in shifting clothes, and timeless symbols and signs used and re-used in the world's greatest art. Mimesis connects the loop of intuition that seemingly began in the artist and was routed through the object, its presentation, and the public sphere. Mimesis, in whatever manner or stage, is what renews. It is the end of one part of the loop, but this ending is every time a new beginning. Artists take the inspiration, insights, and intuitions from their moments of mimesis back to their own creative spaces and creative cultures. And they make new art, out of a native obligation to pass to other what they have perceived. All of art is a living tradition of mimesis—tactile, olfactory, epicurean, oral, visual, conceptual, and spiritual.