ABSTRACT
A work of art that consisted entirely of original, strictly creative elements would be unintelligible; it becomes intelligible only through a certain sacrifice of originality. Since then, in accord with its character as language, art replaces things by signs, and as there are always fewer signs than things, art cannot avoid schematizing and conventionalizing to a certain extent. But representation and communication, impression and expression, copy and sign, can no longer be rigorously distinguished, and become limiting concepts, which in the history of art are realized only in combination. For art is neither the primeval speech of humanity, anterior to all other modes of expression, nor yet a world-language, intelligible at all times by everyone. But the fact that what counts artistically is only that which actually occurs within the limits of the work and figures among the elements of the complex does not at all imply that the work of art is always a completely integrated whole.
