Presentational Objects and Their Interpretation

Abstract

The work of artists is to make works of art, and of theorists theoretical works. In our ordinary dealings with such things, elusive as ontologists may find them, we seem to know well enough in either instance how we should regard and handle them. Ontological questions are none the less raised: what species of entity may they be? It is a question, I confess, to which I could never respond with much enthusiasm. My own interest in art is more ordinary; I care about paintings and poems, about what serves to make them good or bad, about how we should look at or read them. Yet it may prove after all that the two issues are not wholly unrelated.