ABSTRACT
The construction argument might indeed proceed as though critics were an autonomous community while the artists turned out grist for critical mills. This chapter explicates what the dependence of the construction argument upon an enterprise "outside" itself might mean. The import of that dependence, and finally of the "objectivity" of statements about works of art, constitutes the relevance of the created object. Critics consume special objects—artistically relevant ones. Objects are offered to criticism specifically as paintings, books, sculptures, music, and unless this is effectively done the critic has great difficulty "making something" of the presented object. Created objects as performances in such matrices provide, therefore, the ultimate grounds on which values—"esthetic values"—are correctly predicated by critics of created objects. Cultural relativism swamps the performing of the created object in the mere fact that it has been performed, is being performed, and perhaps will be.
