ABSTRACT
Abstract: All artworks have a certain material objectivity. But what is the relation between their character as material and objective, and their being as artworks? This question is not adequately dealt with just by looking to determine what kind of objects artworks are, but requires instead that we attend to the character of artworks as works. In so doing the material objectivity of the work takes on a central importance since it is only through its objectivity that the artwork is able to work as art. The character of artworks as works is explored through consideration of Donald Davidson’s account of the working of metaphor as well as Martin Heidegger’s account of the ‘world-disclosive’ character of art in Greek temple architecture. The art - work is understood in a manner that is itself phenomenological in character, but may also be seen to underpin the more particular phenomenology that may be at work in any specific artwork, as a constant self-disclosedness or self-presencing that occurs only in and through the artwork’s own material objectivity.
