A Monstrous Rhinoceros (as from Life): Toward (and beyond) an Epistemological Nature of the Enacted Pictorial Image

This paper reveals how both contemporary and prior views of the nature of the pictorial arts since early modernism have been underpinned by the classical concept of mimesis, and as a result has brought with it a pre-occupation with both representation and the privileging of the visual. Through tracing the concept of mimesis from its Platonic and Aristotelian roots, the paper will
reveal how the concept permeated the visual arts during early modernism, particularly through the work of art historian Aby Warburg. The concept remained dominant within art history until the late twentieth century, and still has its lingering grip on the visual within non-representational models. In discussing ‘the more than visual’ nature of the pictorial image, the paper draws insight from ‘enactivist’ literature; particularly Francisco Varela’s concept of ‘perceptual guidance by action’ provides a framework within which to theorise perception as structured by movement and action, and as such the whole multi-sensory-motor experience. Providing a theoretical platform within which to re-think the pictorial image as a multi-sensory-motor process in which no one sense modality is privileged. As such, in offering a speculative theory, the paper maintains, the ‘enacted pictorial image’ should be theorised as a ‘trace’, not of a visual world of experience, but of an entire enacted reality.