What good is there in art if there is nothing to be gained from experiencing it. Plato defines art as all skills in making or doing. So all art forms are included in his discussions, from tool making and carpentry, to music, poetry and dance. Plato believed that productive art was subdivided into production of actual objects and production of images. Images are then further divided into genuine likenesses and apparent likenesses.
Apparent likenesses are images that only look like the original but have been altered in some way.
An example of this is when an artist draws a flower in the foreground bigger than the flowers in the background to give the illusion of depth to his picture. Defining what is a genuine likeness and what is merely an apparent likeness is a difficult distinction to make, says Plato, since all imitations fall short of the original. With this in mind Plato says that imitation is, in a sense, both true and untrue, has both being and nonbeing. Plato places art on his fourth level of cognition called imagining. Even though all art is imitation art can embody the eternal form of beauty.