Plato: No Hope for Painting?

In Book X of the Republic, Plato takes a firmly belittling attitute toward painting, holding it to be an imitative craft. In light of the goals, qualitites, and powers often attributed to painting, Plato's view on painting seems wrong and cannot but provoke a response in defense of painting. In challenging Plato's view of painting, the following will be done: Plato's position on painting and the reasons he gives for it will be stated; some of the oversights in Plato's view will be noted; R.G. Collingwood's critique of Plato's view of painting as an imitative craft having deleterious effects on the soul will be summarized; Kandinsky's theory of painting will be summarized in order to show that the idea of the spiritual in painting can be compatible with Plato's basic tenets concerning the nature of truth; attention will be given to some of the goals and accomplishments o f ancient Creek artists which seem in keeping with Plato's values, thereby contradicting Plato's seeming view of the limits inherent to painting; and finally, Plato's views will be looked at briefly in terms of their historical context in an effort to shed some charitable light on why Plato held the views of painting that he did, and to suggest that he might not have really believed the hard-line view on painting that he indicates in the Republic.1 In the Republic, Plato excoriates painting for what he sees as its negative relation to truth and the soul based upon what he thinks painting is and does. Basically, Plato thinks painting is merely imitative of physical appearance, is thereby removed from an understanding of the workings of the objects it depicts, and is thereby, in the most crucial consideration, still